Darcy Lewis Smut Week Prompts
by ofravenwings
Summary: Prompts from Darcy Lewis Smut Week. Set in a handwavy AU where Loki, stripped of some powers, is training as a SHIELD agent with Darcy. Just for fun. Was posting these individually, but will collate them all together here so it makes sense.
1. Rocks Fall, Everyone

Darcy never sees the final blow coming.

In truth, she doesn't see much of anything, thanks to the fact that her glasses got knocked off her face about two seconds after she entered the campsite. Okay, so she didn't actually _see_ the guy who was standing in the shadows, since she was busy shooting at the guy on the _other_ side of the fire, but that was hardly her fault. There's a flash of light, and then the guy who hit her is a blur of pseudo-military camouflage which falls to the ground in a tumble of limbs.

Cut to her scrabbling through the dirt on her hands and knees. The fire these guys have going is burning some kind of wood that spits sparks out, so many of the damn things lighting on her exposed hands and face. She even thinks that she smells burning hair, but she doesn't think about that, just runs her hands through the dirt looking in the general direction that she thinks her glasses flew.

_Great job, Lewis, _she says to herself, making a face as she runs her fingers through something thoroughly disgustingly sticky, wiping it off on her cargo pants. _One day into a real mission, and you're crawling around on the ground. You're gonna make Fury real proud._

She squints up past the fire. She can make out the shapes of the half dozen militia members they had surprised in their high camp, all of them thankfully focused on attacking Loki. She makes a mental note to have a word with Fury about the fact that there are twice the number of guys their intel had indicated. _Perfect for a first mission_, he had said. _Piece of cake._

A wet smack echoes around the clearing, and one of the shadows falls to the ground.

Darcy finds her glasses the moment before a heavy boot steps down on them - and, since her fingers had just been closing on said glasses, the boot also steps on her hand. There's a sickening crunch, and her vision goes red, then black. The pain comes a moment later, a sick heavy throbbing that brings nausea rising in her throat.

The next blow comes to her ribs, the boot kicking hard into her side. When she gets a clear look up, she can see that her attacker has both a gun and a knife, and is choosing to use neither. He wants to make her _hurt_. All of her training is gone from her mind, all of the scenarios that Natasha and Clint had prepared her for. There was only the pain. Another kick to the ribs, and another crack, and suddenly it's hard to breathe, as though she's drowning. This pain, at least, is duller than the pain in her wrist; it clutches at her as though some great monster is sinking its claws into her torso.

A gunshot comes, then another. Another flash of light.

She never sees the last blow coming, blinded by the flash.

She just feels the boot impact her temple, hears the crunch of bone and cartilage. Then everything is dark.

#

Darcy opens her eyes to fire.

Everything is still blurry. She can see little more than the flickering orange light, and a lanky figure crouched next to it adding wood to the blaze. She can hear the pop and crackle of twigs catching, smell the sweet resinous wood and the smoke that rises from the flames. The general outline of shadows and light suggests a small cave.

Darcy can remember the blows to her hand and ribs, has a vague memory of the blow to her head. She lifts her hand gingerly, expecting to see bandages, to feel an onslaught of pain. There's nothing but a faint feeling of bruising in her fingers and ribs, the vague tightness that she associates with a headache just passed.

She relaxes, then, because at least she knows who the figure next to the fire is.

"You shouldn't have wasted healing stones on me," she says. "You shouldn't have had them, anyway."

Loki turns from the fire, moves close enough that she can focus on him. He looks drawn, his black clothing hanging loose on his frame. "You're lucky that I did. Almost all of the bones in your hand were shattered, and you had three broken ribs and a punctured lung. Not to mention the fractured skull and a blood clot pressing against your brain." His voice is toneless, as though he's simply reciting a grocery list.

"Is that all?" Darcy tries to laugh. It comes out as something more like a whimper. "You should have just given me two aspirin and told me to go to bed."

"The plan called for you to remain at a distance." Loki sits down, begins rifling through a pack. He sets aside a portable water purifier, a small cooking pot, oats, collapsible cups and energy bars. Frowns at a scrap of material that Darcy recognises belatedly as her change of underwear.

Darcy makes a grab at the underwear; Loki pulls it away far too easily, stuffs it back into the pack. "That was _your_ plan."

"It was the plan that was approved for our team." Loki pours some of the water stored in the purifier into the pot, sets it over the fire.

"Not by me."

Loki sighs. "Your role was to follow the plan."

"Even when there's twice as many people in the camp as there are meant to be? And when one of them has a damn gun aimed at your head?"

Loki clenches his jaw. Picks up the water purifier and takes it and the pack into the back of the cave. Darcy can just hear the trickle of what she assumes is a spring back there. At least she hopes its a spring, and not Loki taking revenge by peeing into the purifier. It would be just like him.

When he returns, he sets the pack down on the far side of the fire, busies himself at the pot. The unmistakable scent of coffee rises. Darcy remembers her stash of way-too-expensive-to-be-instant coffee that had been tucked into one of the side pockets. As contraband as Loki's healing stones, but right now she doesn't care. Coffee always makes everything better.

When Loki comes to sit down near her again - more than an arms-length from where she's lying - he's only holding one cup. Which he lifts to his own mouth.

"Um. Where's mine?" Darcy asks.

"I would not give you caffeine after the injuries you have sustained," Loki says. "There's porridge cooking, and when the water purifier is full again, I can make you some hot water."

"Hot water?" Darcy sits up, pushes the blanket that had been draped over her away. Loki's managed to find moss from somewhere to act as a mattress, and the blanket she recognises as the one that always lives rolled up on the top of her pack. "I get hot water while you get coffee? _My_ coffee?"

Loki sips his coffee. Loudly. "You should also not be moving around more than is needed."

"And how is that I'm the one who's injured and you get a drink first?" Darcy flops back down, regrets it immediately. The moss mattress is not as thick as it could be. She inhales deeply, wondering if it's possible to absorb caffeine via the nasal route. She turns her head to the side, sighs dramatically. She's aware that she's being a drama queen, but right now she doesn't care. She wouldn't do this to anyone else, but Loki? He doesn't matter.

She notices two things at the same time. First - the scent of blood, copper rich. Second: Loki has the hem of his trousers rolled up to his knee, and his calf is swathed in bandages that look like they were torn from the hem of his inner shirt.

"What the hell happened?" Darcy asks.

Loki's eyes flick down to his bandaged calf. "It is nothing. I have taken care of it."

Darcy sits up again. She tries to stand, but realises as she tries that she doesn't have the energy for it. Settles for an undignified half drag. Blood blooms on the bandages on the front and back of Loki's calf, a wound pattern she recognises. "You were shot."

Loki looks at her over the rim of his coffee. "I took care of it."

"You used all the healing stones on me, didn't you?"

He sets down his cup. Out of her reach. "I had more in my pack."

Darcy looks around for the first time. Realises that Loki's pack is nowhere to be seen. "They took your pack, didn't they? At least one of them got away, shooting you in the process, and took your pack. Which, by the way, had all of our back up weapons, most of the food _and _the radio. Because I believe that, to quote you: _'the stronger party should be the one to carry the bulk of the supplies, because the weaker will be the first to fall.'_"

"You were the one who sustained a fractured skull," Loki snaps.

Darcy rakes her hair back from her face, winces when her fingers catch on a blood-clotted tangle. "Can't you just zap us back to base or something?"

"If you bothered to listen to anything other than your own prattling, you would remember that my powers were limited by the Allfather before I was sent to Midgard. I could no more teleport the both of us than I could move the moon."

Fear strikes into Darcy for the first time since she woke. "So we walk, then?"

He fixes her with an unblinking stare. "Neither of us are walking anywhere, Ms Lewis. And if you were bothering to listen right now, you would hear the storm outside. There is going to be a heavy snowfall within a day."

"Great." Darcy folds her arms. "So we're stuck here, then."

Loki turns to stir the oatmeal. "SHIELD has trackers in both of us." He touches the back of his neck, where a tiny scar tells of the chip inserted beneath his skin. "It will only take them a day or two to find us. Once the storm breaks."

"So how long is the storm going to last?"

Loki pours a watery, unappetising gruel into a cup, hands it to Darcy. "I am not a weather station, Ms Lewis."

Darcy rolls her eyes. "You're not much of anything."

"And you are?"

#

After two days, the storm has not abated.

Darcy's eyes adjust a little, to the point where she feels that she can at least get up and walk around the cave without falling over things. She does manage to trip over Loki once, much to his amusement. She did note that he made no effort to catch her, curses Fury for about the thousandth time for pairing them together in training.

The cave itself was small, maybe five of Darcy's paces across. In the back, the spring wells clear and tooth-achingly cold. They use a small alcove as a bathroom; a hole in the floor has water flowing away from the cave. Darcy hopes every time she uses it that the water doesn't loop back somehow to feed their spring.

After two days, she almost feels well again. There's only faint patterns of bruising on her hand reflecting the imprint of the boot which had smashed her hand.

Loki spends most of the time stretched out on the bare stone of the floor, seemingly asleep. Every time she steps over him, she's tempted to drive her heel into his solar plexus. He's always so infuriatingly _calm_, and she wants to scream and shout and swear and stomp her feet.

She still doesn't know how they got assigned to each other in training. Someone's idea of a joke, she thought at first, but then actual training began, and she realised that they were serious. And no matter how much she wheedled and cajoled Fury, he never budged.

Sometimes she wondered if this was Fury's plan to get rid of Loki. To let her get so mad that she got to find out just how immortal or mortal the Asgardian prince was.

She knows it wouldn't take much. She hated Loki for what he'd done to New York, even though everyone else was mostly over that, now the city had been rebuilt. He and Thor were all bromancey again, and even Jane and Loki had been seen having coffee from time to time.

It was only Darcy who hated him.

It was only Darcy who had been paired with him.

Now, pacing back and forth across the cave in an effort to get some kind of exercise, she wonders if maybe it's Fury's plan to get rid of _her_.

She doesn't know. All she knows is that she hates him and he hates her.

They're a match made in hell.

#

She wakes to the sound of thunder.

It's night, she thinks. It's hard to tell, the storm turning day as dark as night. The cave twists away from its opening anyway, so little light would fall where they were, even if the sun was shining.

The fire is burning lower, and she gets up to add some more wood. The pile is dwindling, and she wonders for the first time how Loki actually got it in the cave. Magic? She tried to picture Loki hauling wood. That image leads to one of Loki throwing one of the huge logs they toss in the Highland Games, whatever the hell that was actually called. She laughs.

A soft noise, and she turns to see Loki sitting up for once. He's on the opposite side of the cave to her makeshift bed, legs crossed. He's staring at nothing.

"Thank you," Darcy says. "For using the healing stones."

Loki doesn't look at her. Doesn't move.

Darcy sighs. "Is that your brother's work out there?"

A slight shake of his head.

"Well, then, no rescue tonight." Darcy lies down on her bed, pulls the blanket over her. "Night."

She's half asleep when she thinks she hears him speak, his voice so soft that she might have imagined it: _"You're welcome, Darcy."_

#

The days and nights continue to pass. They eke out the wood as much as they can, but soon the fire is little more than glowing cinders.

It grows colder and colder. Darcy shivers beneath her blanket.

Soon, she's not shivering at all.

Soon her fingers and toes are growing numb.

"You are growing hypothermic."

Loki is standing above her, barely visible in the gloom of the cave. A thin grey light filters into the space, just enough to make out the shape of his features.

"Doesn't bother you, though, does it, Frost Giant?" She sees him wince, and immediately wishes that she hadn't said it. She isn't even supposed to _know_, except for the fact that Jane let it slip one night after too many beers. "Just let me freeze. Then you can carve shunks off me and cook me on a spit the way you've always wanted to."

"You think I wish you dead?"

Darcy rolls over, facing away from him. "I know what you think of Midgardians. Jane and Erik are the only ones you have the tiniest bit of respect for, and that's because they're brilliant. And I'm just me. Of course you hate me."

She feels the blanket shift, and twitches it back irritably. It shifts again, and this time she looks back, starts to tell Loki to stop messing around, but then she sees him slipping beneath the blanket.

"What the hell?" she asks.

"You need warmth. This is the simplest way." He curved his body against her back, wraps an arm around her waist. He is so tense that his skin feels like marble.

"Dude, you're even colder than the cave." Darcy tries to pull away, but Loki might as well _be_ marble for how little she can move.

And suddenly he is warm, burning so hot against her coldness that she feels as though he has a fever.

Darcy begins shivering again immediately. "Nice trick," she says through chattering teeth.

"It is a simple metabolic shift. Not magic. It's part of how I…"

"How you hide the blue?" Darcy finishes.

Loki relaxes slightly against her, though he doesn't release his grip on her at all. As if he's afraid she's going to go flying off as soon as he releases her. And she probably would, Darcy thinks.

"You should get some sleep. You're still healing," Loki says. His breath is cool against the back of her neck.

Darcy yawns, closes her eyes.

She probably would run from Loki.

Wouldn't she?"

#

When Darcy wakes, Loki is still sleeping.

She is lying on her back, and Loki is wrapped around her, his long legs twined with hers. One arm is around her waist still, the other pillows his head. The arm around her is much looser, his hand pressed against her ribs, thumb brushing the underside of her breast. As soon as Darcy becomes aware of that touch, she can think of nothing else.

In sleep, his face is relaxed, lips parted and not held in the tense expression she's used to seeing. His hair is tangled, one lock fallen over his cheek. Without thinking, Darcy brushes it back from his face. She hesitates, then draws her fingers down the curve of his cheekbone. Loki murmurs in his sleep, shifts closer to her. She feels the hardness of him pressing against her thigh, and then his hand moves, cupping her breast. Desire pulses between Darcy's thighs.

She stares at Loki. Her thoughts are tangled. Is _this_ what's been going on all the time? Not hate, but lust? Something more?

Darcy screws her eyes shut. No, no, no, she _hates_ Loki.

She opens her eyes, realises that she hasn't moved away from him. In fact, she's curved her body further into his touch, without even deciding to.

She starts to pull away from Loki, and he comes instantly awake, his eyes staring straight into hers. His gaze flicks down to his hand on her breast, then lower, to where he's pressed against her thigh.

And then something happens that Darcy never thought she'd see.

Loki blushes.

Even in the dim light of the cave, she can see the blood rush to his face.

Something clicks, and she knows the answer to a question that's been bothering her for too long. "Did you request me as a training partner?" she asks.

Loki starts to move away from her, his hand sliding from her breast.

Darcy doesn't think, just grabs him and pulls him back to face her. "Do you hate me?"

He frowns. "What?"

"Answer the question." She pushes her thigh against him, just a little.

His eyes flick down again. "Darcy, what are you doing?"

"Do. You. Hate. Me?"

Loki swallows hard. "Do you hate me?" His voice is soft, almost that of a boy.

"I thought I did…but.." Darcy shrugs. "You saved my life. Twice. Things like that tend to squish hatred."

"I don't hate you, Darcy," Loki says. He pulls away again, and this time she lets him go. "I think that-"

Whatever he was going to say is swallowed by the rumble of falling rocks outside the cave. Both Darcy and Loki are on their feet immediately. Loki holds Darcy behind him as they both crane to see around the turn to the entrance.

The entrance which is no longer there, blocked now by what looks like half a tonne of rock and snow.

Darcy stares at it, aware that she's shaking. "They can still track us through that. Thor could break through it. Tony, too, maybe. They can still get us out." She looks at Loki. It's darker now, and she can see little more than the outline of him. "They'll get us out. Won't they?"

Loki simply turns away. Goes back to the makeshift bed. Sits down.

Darcy follows him more slowly. Sits down opposite him. It's almost totally dark, the air still. She can't even hear the storm outside now. "They'll find a way. No one might give a crap about me dying, but Thor won't let his baby brother die."

"You really think that? That no one cares if you die?"

"I'm replaceable, right? I mean, after New York, there are tonnes of perky girls who want to join SHIELD. Hell, I spent some time filing all the applications before I applied myself."

Loki reaches out, places a hand on her thigh. "You, Darcy Lewis, are not replaceable." She hears him swallow. "I requested for you to be my partner. Because you are strong, and you think on your feet, and you don't take orders blindly." His fingers tense against her leg. "You saved my life, also, Darcy, because you don't follow orders. And I owe you thanks."

Darcy feels herself flush. "You're just saying that because we're trapped in here, and you want to get laid before you die." As soon as the words are out, she wants to smack herself. Sure, she meant it as a joke, but she suspects that Loki know that most of the things she jokes about are things she's too afaid to say seriously.

"Would you?" Loki asks. His voice is that quiet boyish tone again. "Lie with me, if asked?"

"Hell, who can deny a dying man, right? Or a dying woman?" Darcy swallows. Her throat is dry. "Are you asking?"

He slides his hand along her leg until he finds her hand. Twines his fingers with hers. "I am asking."

Darcy looks down at their linked hands. "But I hate you." She looks up again, finds him staring at her, his eyes seeming bright even in the gloom.

"As I hate you, Darcy," he says, his voice husky.

Then he leans in and kisses her. His kiss is gentle at first, but deepens quickly, his tongue flicking against her lower lip until she opens for him. The inside of his mouth is cool, a strange contrast against his still-heated skin. It's oddly arousing, and Darcy finds herself leaning into the kiss, pressing the length of her body against his. He has softened as they spoke, but he quickly grows hard again, his hips grinding rhythmically against her.

Loki rolls her over, settling himself between her thighs. He raises himself up on his hands, looks down at her. "Are you certain you want this? You were severely injured."

"Dude, you're the one who's got a hole in his leg," Darcy says. "Are you just trying to weasel out of this?"

He blinks. "What does a weasel have to do with this?"

"Never mind."

Darcy reaches up, tangles her hand in his hair, pulls him down to her. He catches himself on his elbows, supporting most of his weight while still pressing his body against hers. His hips start that maddening grinding motion again that makes Darcy wish that their clothes would just vanish. Then she remembers that this is _Loki_, and she could probably ask him to magic away their clothes if she wanted. She wonders what else he could magic, and has to swallow a giggle.

Loki pulls back. "Do I amuse you?"

"My brain has a habit of wandering to stupid places," she says.

He raises an eyebrow. "Such as?"

She bites her lip. "I was just wondering the kinds of things you could do with your magic, that's all."

He grins. "Many, many thing, were I at my full power." He lowers himself to her again, begins dropping kisses along the line of her jaw, trailing more down her neck. She feels the heat of his tongue on the skin over her pulse. "Right now, most of my magic is being used to aid the healing, but if I were not injured, there are still many things I could do."

He kneels between her legs, slides his hands up her hips. Keeps moving up her torse, hooking her shirt and lifting it as he goes. He looks down at her, his eyes darkening. Darcy wishes that she'd worn something a little more interesting than a damn sports bra. It doesn't seem to bother Loki, however. He traces the outline of the fabric, his fingers moving lightly over her skin.

"I could, for example, create a double of myself," Loki says, leaning down and pressing a kiss to her sternum. His kisses follow the path his fingers took, drawing waves of gooseflesh from Darcy's skin. "More than one, even." He presses a kiss lightly on the places where Darcy's nipples press out against the fabric of her bra, drawing a moan from her. "A double of you, if you wished."

And _that_ sends an unexpected rush of lust twisting through Darcy. She arches up against his mouth, and he laughs softly. Trails his fingers around her ribs, finds the clasp of her bra, peels the garment away from her skin. He kneels up again, just looking down at her, his hands on her waist.

Darcy shivers, reminded of how cold the cave is. Loki immediately presses his body back down against hers. He slides his whole body up and down hers, the fabric of his shirt rubbing rhythmically against her breasts. His hips are still rocking against hers, pressing the fabric of her trousers against her core. She's already so _close_, and he's barely even touched her. He's not even kissing her right now, just presses his forehead against hers, his eyes burning into hers.

And Darcy can't handle the teasing any more. She half tears his shirt from him, gasping at the sensation of his bare skin against her breasts. She reaches down between them and unfastens her trousers, then his. Both of them wriggle out of their last clothing, Loki carefully guiding the fabric past his bandaged calf. The bandage is ragged, and Darcy can smell fresh blood.

"Are you sure that's okay?" she asks.

Loki's eyes move slowly up and down her body. "Right now, my leg is the last thing on my mind."

Darcy lets her eyes move higher. Loki's body is long and lean, and surprisingly well muscled. She's always presumed him to simply be thin, but he's anything but. His cock curves up against his belly, evidence of the truth of his words.

Darcy shivers again, and then Loki is pressing her down against the moss, pulling the blanket over them both. He dips his head to her breast, taking her hardened nipple into his mouth. The coolness of his tongue is almost shocking, and completely erotic. His other hand caresses her other breast, then moves down over her belly, dips between her thighs. He makes a strangled moan deep in his throat when he finds her wetness, slides one finger, then two, inside her.

And Darcy is rocking helplessly against his hand, not caring about the cold or the cave or anything but the feel of Loki's skin against hers, his mouth on her body. She arches her neck and closes her eyes, letting him tease for a moment, his fingers plunging deep, then retreating to her entrance, thrusting only shallowly while his thumb grazes her clit. Then she decides that she can't take any more of that, and she closes a hand in his hair, pulls him up to face her again. He grins again, slides the length of his cock along her folds.

"You," Darcy says, reaching down and taking him in hand. Squeezing, just hard enough to draw a gasp from him, then lining him up with her. "Are a damn tease." She slides her hands around to cup his behind, pulls him into her. He is large, but she's so wet that he slides in deep with a single thrust.

Loki just laughs. Darcy grins, and his laughter breaks off abruptly as she lifts her legs, hooks them around his waist. The angle pulls him even deeper inside her.

"No more teasing," Darcy whispers.

His mouth comes down on hers, and he starts moving in earnest. There's little finesse in this, now, just the primal rhythm of two bodies moving together. Every so often he adjusts his angle, sliding his body in such a way that his pubic bone grazes against her clit. Every time he does it, she moans, and he smiles against her skin.

It doesn't take long until Darcy is thrusting up hard at him, her hands on his hips trying to pull him ever deeper. And then she's falling over the edge, an orgasm stronger than any she has ever experienced exploding within her. A moment later, Loki comes, too, his hips thrusting even harder, then pressing deep as he spills inside her.

There's a moment of panic, then, because Darcy has never, ever let any lover come inside her. It's not the worry about pregnancy or disease, but simply the fact that it was such an intimate thing.

Then Loki collapses by her side, and she looks up into the gloom, remembers that they're going to die here, and it doesn't seem to matter at all.

He curls his body around hers, pulls the blanket over them both. It's Darcy who wraps his arm around her this time, her fingers lacing with his.

"I really hate you, you know," she murmurs, pressing a kiss to his knuckles.

"I hate you, too," he murmurs sleepily against her neck.

Darcy closes her eyes. Surrounded by warmth, she is soon asleep.

#

Ten hours later, light falls into the cave as the last of the large rocks is moved away.

Three figures enter, and all three stop just inside the mouth of the main cave, looking down at the two figures entwined beneath the blanket, their clothes strewn about the cave.

Tony Stark opens the visor of his suit, revealing his grinning face. "Told you," he says. "You both owe me fifty bucks."

Natasha and Clint exchange a glance. Clint shrugs. "Explains why they've both been such pains in the ass in training, at least. Maybe we should have locked them in a closet a long time ago."

"You think we should wake them?" Natasha asks.

"Nah," Tony says. "Not yet. Let them sleep, just a little longer." He tilts his head to the side. "Besides, they both look so cute together. And for once, they're both silent."

"Good point," Clint says. "Let's wait for them outside. Let them have a little dignity, at least."

"Dignity? Since when have either of them earned the right to any dignity?" Tony asks.

The three of them retreat, still bickering, and silence falls over the cave again.

Darcy and Loki sleep on, content in each other's arms.


	2. Don't Touch the Shiny Thing

"Loki, don't touch that."

Darcy doesn't even know why she bothers to say it. Because Loki, of course, is crossing the room, heading straight towards the collection of shiny whatever-the-hell-they-ares that fill the shelf above the desk.

"You're not supposed to touch anything," she says. Mostly, this time so she can add into the report - which she has to write of course, because actual _typing_ and _printing_ are not jobs for an ex-Asgardian god, thank you very much - that she at least protested whatever hell he's about to release.

Last week, he had managed someone to teleport approximately one thousand tiny white mice out of nowhere while he was "just touching" a device that they were only supposed to be locating. The tech guys still don't know how he did that, since the device was only supposed to change the ambient temperature of a room. Darcy still dreams about the feeling of all those tiny claws on her skin.

This assignment was the same as the previous one - infiltrate a businessman's private circle, confirm the existence of a collection of alien tech. Nothing more. Unless you're Loki, who just has to investigate everything they find. Darcy's not even sure why, but knowing him, he has some reason that no one else will think of for another five years. The guy plays a _long_ game.

Loki pokes a finger at a device that looks like a carved flute. Darcy scowls at his back and plumps down onto the couch. Loki, of course, looks like he's just steppes from the pages of a magazine in his tailored suit and green silk scarf. He'd decided that his cover would be as a new potential business partner. One with lots of money, of course, because god forbid that Loki appear in anything off the rack.

Meanwhile, Darcy got to spend the week masquerading as a maid, complete with horrible nylon uniform. Which is at least one size too small, the zipper straining over her bust. She suspects she owes Loki at least three deaths for how many times she's been groped in this damn uniform. Not to mention the businessman who actually tried to shove money down her bra in an effort to "secure her interests".

Darcy lies down onto the couch, propping her sneakers up on the arm. Every part of her body aches from scrubbing every damn bathroom in the mansion. "We should call technical, they'll come and box everything up," she says to the ceiling, knowing that Loki will be paying no attention to them. "If you break something, Fury's gonna be pissed."

Loki's response is to pick up an object that looks like a flattened potato. Green light glows around his fingers, followed by a snap of electricity. Loki hisses through his teeth, shaking his hand as though he's been burned.

_Good_, Darcy thinks. _Now do that another twenty times and maybe we'll be close to starting to be even._

After the cave incident - and that's the only way she can think of it now, as an _incident_ - she had thought that things were going to get better. That maybe they would actually be _good_. When she had woken that morning, she and Loki had been wrapped around each other, both of them still sticky and sore from the previous night. He had smiled at her, and leaned in. Expecting a kiss, she had closed her eyes.

The kiss had never come, and when she'd opened her eyes again, Loki was staring towards the blocked cave entrance.

The _formerly_ blocked cave entrance, through which bright sunlight was spilling.

Loki had slid from the blankets, gathered his clothes and dressed. And she had known, watching him, that nothing was going to be better. Nothing was going to be good.

He had walked from the cave without her, leaving her to scramble to dress and gather her things.

That pack, she had shoved far beneath her bed, requisitioning a new one as soon as possible.

As it turned out, despite Loki's Asgardian physiology and the magic he'd been using to heal himself, his bullet wound had started to fester. Loki had spent two days in medical care and then five more days locked in his apartment in Stark Tower. Darcy had gone to see him twice each day in hospital, once more at his apartment. Had called too many times to count before she realised that he was simply ignoring her.

She got the message. The incident in the cave had not happened.

That day, she had put in her first request with Fury to be assigned a new partner. Fury had torn up the application and tossed it into the trash.

Watching Loki as he picks up what appears to be a smooth silver egg, Darcy makes a mental note to turn in another application. Maybe if she threatened to quit, he'd do something.

Green light glows around Loki's fingers, and Darcy braces herself for another spark. She hopes this one hurts him more. She hopes it blows his damn hand-

-off.

Darcy blinks. Her thought felt like it broke somewhere in the middle. And somehow she's on the other side of the room, and she, not Loki, is holding the silver egg. It glows now with a pale light, and is cold against her skin. She sets it back on the shelf - or tries to, because she's suddenly clumsy, and the egg tumbles from the shelf and falls to the concrete floor. It splits in two, spilling wires and something that looks like rancid egg yolk.

She steps back, not wanting to get any of the goo on her shoes. Her feet tangle with each other, and she crashes down hard, landing smack on her behind with a jolt that clicks her teeth together painfully.

Someone laughs, and she glares at them because she's not-

The thought goes unfinished, because she's staring at herself. Her body, lying on the couch on the other side of the room, her own face looking as shocked as she feels.

She holds out her hands. Too large, the fingers too long. Too familiar.

_She is in Loki's body_.

She looks across the room again. "Loki?" It's his voice she's speaking in, so deep that she can feel it resonating deep within her chest. And damn, but that feels weird. "What the fuck did you do? I told you not to touch anything."

Loki sits up, half falling before he manages the transition. He tugs down the hem of the maid's uniform, looking uncomfortable. "Does your body always hurt this much?" he asks.

"It does when you've been scrubbing bathrooms all day," Darcy says. She stands up gingerly, focusing on each movement she needs to make. It feels weird to be so tall, able to see things from a completely different perspective. "I doubt you'd know that feeling, since you've only had to lift, what, a martini?"

Loki scowls, a familiar expression that looks strange on her features. "Just pick up the object. Maybe I can talk you through the magic. Or maybe…" He holds up a hand, focuses. Nothing happens. "Maybe not. The magic seems to be bound in my physical form. Interesting."

Darcy rolls her eyes. "I can't pick it up. It kind of…broke."

"You broke it?" The indignant words come out as a squeak, and Darcy can't help but laugh. Loki glares at her.

"I'm calling in technical," Darcy says. "They'll figure it out."

"But you can't-"

"Oh, I can, because thanks to you and your need to touch everything, I'm not you. Team leader and all of that. I'm the one who makes the decisions, which you insisted on, remember?"

Loki slumps back into the couch, arms crossed. His forehead is creased

Darcy just smirks and pulls Loki's phone from her pocket.

#

Fury crosses his arms, leans back in his seat.

"Really?" he asks. "_Really_?"

The scientist from technical holds the box containing the broken egg gingerly. "Really. We checked everything twice." She slides a glance at Darcy in Loki's body, her eyes performing a quick down-and-up flick. Darcy searches her memory for the scientists' name. Laurie, she thinks. Laurie does that down and up look again, then freezes, blinking rapidly and going red. "I'd better get this down to technical," she says, and rushes off.

Darcy watches her go. She recognises that quick look. That was the look that you use when you're checking someone out. Laurie was checking out _Loki_, forgetting that it was actually Darcy in this body.

"I don't know how you people always get yourself into such stupid-ass situations," Fury says. "First the mice, which we are _still_ finding, by the way, and now _this_."

Darcy avoids looking directly at Loki wearing her body, though she's aware of him standing erect next to her. His tight expression on her features just looks damn odd. Plus, there's the whole thing of rarely getting to see your own face except in reflection, and that just adds up to plain _weird._

Fury sighs. "I suggest that both of you go to your apartments. You're officially on leave until we figure this out." His gaze flicks between them. "Wait. You should go to each other's apartments." He holds up a hand when they start to protest. "Just for once, will you do what you're told? How will it look to everyone if you suddenly appear to have switched apartments? Unless you want me to post a general notice explaining to all of SHIELD just how stupid you both are? No?" He waits, but neither Darcy or Loki protest this time, though Darcy sees how uncomfortable Loki looks. "Until technical finds an answer, I suggest you both lay low. And Lewis?" He's look at Loki as he says this, and has to jerk his head quickly to Darcy when she looks up. "I hope technical gets this fixed fast, because I am not going to get used to this. No more requests, okay?" He waves his hand, looks down at his work.

Darcy and Loki hurry from his office. Darcy still stumbles every few steps, Loki's legs too damn long, his centre of gravity too high. Loki, she notices, has adapted rather too quickly to her body. She watches him as he passes a small knot of male agents, and damn him if he doesn't _sashay_ past them, flicking them a look from beneath his eyelashes.

"Will you stop that?" Darcy hisses at him once they're out of earshot of the agents.

"Stop what?" He looks up at her, eyes wide.

"You know. The hips, the swaying." She looks critically at his uniform. "And I'm pretty sure that there's at least a few more buttons on that uniform, by the way."

He smirks at her. Fishes keys out of his bag, holds them out. "We'd better switch now, while no one's looking."

"You're really going to go along with Fury?"

Those wide eyes regard her again. "I'm the one who follows orders, remember?"

She snatches the keys from his hand. Fishes the keys from his pocket and holds them out. He takes them, and she knows he deliberately brushes his fingers against hers.

Her head is hurting. Or Loki's head is hurting. She's getting to the point where she's not sure she can tell the difference.

She turns to leave, then stops, looks back. Loki is still standing there, swinging her keys around his finger. "And no looking. Or touching."

He raises an eyebrow. And it is very, very strange to see Loki's expression on her face. And it is not hot. Not hot _at all._

"Of course not," he says.

"And if you need to use the bathroom, then close your eyes or look away," Darcy says.

He smirks, somehow managing to force _his_ smile onto her face. Drops into a way too perfect curtsey and sashays away.

Darcy wants to punch something. Preferably Loki's smirking face. His real face, anyway. With him occupying the body.

She settles for stomping her foot on the floor. Something cracks beneath her, and she leaps away.

Loki has already vanished around the corner. She stomps again, harder this time. A crack appears in the stone beneath her feet. That, at least, feels good.

It's the first time anything has felt good since the cave.

#

The key unlocks the physical lock on the door to Loki's apartment. The palm scanner glows green.

The door doesn't open.

Darcy swears. She knows that Loki can set magic locks on rooms. No doubt it's why he was so happy to hand over the keys. Meanwhile, Loki's in _her_ apartment, probably rifling through her underwear drawer. Laughing at her.

"Stupid little Darcy," she says. She bangs her hand against the door, and a spark of green light flies from her fingers. "Now that's interesting."

She wiggles her fingers, then bangs the door again. This time, the spark is larger. Whatever the magic lock that Loki's placed on his rooms, it _wants_ to let Loki's body in. She smacks her palm against the door, hoping that maybe the magic will finds its own way to working.

And it does, because the door swings open.

"Ha," she says, stepping inside. "Suck on that, Loki. Now who's going to go through whose underwear?"

The door closes behind her, leaving her in darkness for a moment. As one, lights flare into life around the room.

She stands and stares. Because Loki has made his apartment look as much like Asgard as possible. He's had the walls papered with flocked emerald green, the ceiling painted a dull gold. All of the furniture follows the gold and green colour scheme, with dark wood thrown in for contrast. Everything is ornate, most of the furniture looking like it's come straight from a palace.

Darcy walks slowly around the apartment. The living space is larger than hers, and even the kitchen continues the colour scheme. When she opens cupboards, she finds them mostly empty, apart from several blocks of chocolate, coffee and creamer, and, surprisingly, a box of Pop-Tarts. Kept for Thor, she assumes. She's not particularly hungry - which is amazing in and of itself, because in her own body, she's pretty much hungry all the time - but she grabs one and bites into it cold, just because she can. The fridge holds several bottles of expensive beer and a half-empty bottle of white wine. She makes a mental note to finish that off later.

She slams the fridge closed. She doesn't want to think of later. Any moment, someone from tech is going to bang on the door and summon her to go and switch back to her own body. Tech always gets everything sorted out.

She realises only belatedly that she's slammed the door so hard that she's broken its hinges. The door hangs crooked now, cold air leaking out.

"Sorry, Loki, baby, your beer's going to get all warm," she says. "However will you cope?"

The rest of the apartment has the same layout as the others in the Tower. Small bathroom, which Loki has had redecorated in dark green and black marble. Study, which contains books along one wall, and a long workbench along the other. The bench is littered with tiny cogs and gears, some half-assembled into unidentifiable machines. Darcy touches one lightly, and it begins to vibrate.

The bedroom, she leaves until last. The same colour scheme continues here, and she wonders if Loki ever gets tired of green and black. The bed is enormous - larger than a king, probably wide enough for four people. She has to shove away the image of Loki with three other people as she flops down onto the bed. She's not tired in the least, her borrowed body feeling full of energy.

She doesn't know how long she lies there, staring up at the ceiling, just waiting for someone to come and knock at the door. She knows that when she finally acknowledges the heaviness in her bladder and gets up, it's after dark.

Her own words to Loki echo through her mind as she goes to the bathroom. She's never realised before that Loki favours trousers that lace up at the fly, but she has good reason to be annoyed with him now for his sartorial choices as she fumbles at the laces. She considers trying to stand, but ends up sitting down, afraid that she'll manage to pee into her own face.

That task done, she returns to the bed. Now that she's moved, she also realises how damn uncomfortable Loki's clothes are. She hesitates, remembering her words again. Then she remembers how Loki has been treating her since the cave, and she doesn't hesitate again.

It only takes a minute to strip off her clothes. Technically, she's seen Loki naked, but that was in the gloom of the cave. She looks down at Loki's body, runs her hands down her sides. His skin is soft, the muscles beneath defined and hard. She moves her fingers across the muscles of her abdomen, and shivers. There's a definite stirring in her groin, and as she watches, her cock - and oh gods, she has a cock right now - rises.

Darcy bites her lip.

Right now, she bets that Loki has probably stripped her naked, is probably doing goddamn high kicks around her apartment in her body.

And that image, it seems, is what Loki's body needs, because she's fully hard now. Darcy grins, and bounces a little on the bed, laughs as her cock continues to bounce up and down even after her body is still.

"How the hell do you guys get anything done with these attached to you?" she asks.

She bounces again, just because she can. Laughs again.

The first touch is tentative, just a mere brushing of her fingers along the shaft. Even that feels good, and she can't help the moan that rises in her throat. She wraps her fingers around the shaft, then, experiments with pressure, with rhythm.

It seems to take an embarrassingly short time for her to come, her hips jerking arrhythmically as her hand continues to pump, milking out the last of the pleasure.

Almost immediately she feels revulsion. She knows that what she did was utterly wrong, something that she would be appalled at anyone else for doing. She gathers up the stained bedclothes, tosses them into the washing machine. Takes her borrowed body into the shower, scrubs herself clean.

Loki, it seems, doesn't actually own any pyjamas, so she has to settle for a tshirt and boxers. Curls up in his bed and sleeps.

Thankfully, she does not dream.

#

She's woken what seems like only moments later by knocking on the door.

Darcy opens it to Loki and the woman from technical. She holds a small wooden box; inside is the silver egg, whole again.

"Have a nice night?" Loki asks. He steps back, spreads his arms out to his sides. Turns slowly around.

Darcy frowns until she realises that he's showing that he's still wearing the same clothes as the previous day. She glances down at herself, realises that she's still in the boxers and tshirt.

"Lauren worked all night fixing the device," Loki says. He hooks an arm around Lauren's shoulders, pulls her close. He's grinning, managing again to make Darcy's face grin the way his does.

"Well, you kept me well supplied with coffee," Lauren says. Her cheeks turn pink. "And that chocolate cake!" She turns to Darcy, the blush fading. "You should just have to touch the device, and switcho-changeo."

Darcy looks at Loki.

Loki winks. "Unless you'd prefer some more time?"

Darcy reaches out and grabs the shiny egg. Hard enough that her fingernails go white.

Blink, and she's Loki. Blink, and she's back in her own body, her arm around Lauren's shoulders. Lauren, the woman's name was Lauren, not Laurie.

Loki makes a show of straightening his shirt. "Well, that was a diversion. I imagine Fury will have us back out in the field as soon as possible, so we should both get some rest."

He closes the door in their faces. Lauren squeaks, scuttles off down the corridor.

Darcy stomps her foot. Wishes she could crack the floor.

All she manages is a bruised heel.


	3. A Piece of Wood

The door closes.

Darcy whirls, her bag falling from her hands, its contents scattering over the floor. Three concrete steps lead up to the small platform the door opens onto. Her steps echo hollowly as she ascends each one.

She pushes against the door. There is no handle on this side, nothing but smooth, cold metal. She heard the lock engage, and she knows that the door won't open, but she tries anyway, pushing until she feels a muscle cramp in her lower back.

The door doesn't open.

Resting her forehead against the metal, she closes her eyes, counts to ten. Focuses on her breathing. Visualises a safe place. All tricks that Bruce taught her when it had become apparent even to him that she was having trouble holding her temper around Loki. Well, it had kind of been obvious to everyone when she flung a decanter at Loki's head in the middle of a staff meeting. Tony's still docking her pay to compensate for the scotch she wasted.

When she finally turns back to the room, she feels calm. And as soon as she sees Loki, all of the visualising and counting and breathing counts for nothing, because she's furious all over again. Her fingers twitch, and she knows that if there had been anything within reach, Loki would be wearing it now as a hat. A broken hat.

Loki, in turn, is paying absolutely no attention to her or to the door. He's on the far side of the basement poking around on the dusty shelves. And - _of course_ - he's touching _everything_.

"Didn't the incident with the silver egg thing teach you anything?" Darcy asks. She's taken to thinking of most of what happens with Loki as incidents. The cave incident. The scotch incident. The oops-I-touched-this-and-now-I'm-you incident. That one, she doesn't like to think about much. She still dreams occasionally of being him, of the feeling of him coming. Wakes every time soaking wet.

She slides her phone out of her pocket. No signal down here. _Of course._ "Loki?"

He picks up a thing that looks something like the kind of lumpen vase a first grader might make. Peers inside. "Hm?"

Counting. Breathing, Visualising. "Did you happen to notice that there was a piece of wood holding the door open?"

Loki put the ugly vase back on the shelf. Wipes his hand on his trousers and picks up the piece of wood that he'd propped against a low shelf. "It was the perfect length for getting to the back of these shelves. Good thinking, there."

"Except for the part where it was _propping the door open_. You know, so it doesn't lock and trap us down here?"

Loki looks unperturbed. "It's a piece of wood. But if you're so attached to it here." He holds it out with a flourish, as though he's handing her a bouquet of roses.

"I don't want the fucking piece of wood!" Darcy lashes out, knocks the wood from his hand. And now she's thought the word wood so many times that it's starting to sound weird, not even like a real word. And isn't that just the cherry on the cake of this _incident_? "You see that door?"

Loki spreads his hands out in a gesture that Darcy's ever-so-helpful brain translates as: _of course I see the door, you idiot._

"Do I have to use small words?" Darcy grinds her teeth together. Focuses on her happy place. Which her brain decides to supply with bonus Loki, his hands spread out in that annoying gesture. She pushes the image away. As much as she can. "Door closes, door locks." She speaks slowly, enunciating each syllable carefully. Irritation shows on Loki's face. _Good_. "We're fucking locked in the basement, okay?"

She sinks down onto the step, swearing again as her tailbone thuds against the cold concrete. Great, she's the only person who'll come back from a mission with a broken ass. Wouldn't that just be peachy, on top of all the fuckery that's already happening.

She makes a mental note that she owes her swear jar at home about fifty bucks.

"So unlock the door?" Loki asks, turning back to the shelves. "There will be a spare key around somewhere. Isn't that the way of things?"

"I don't think people tend to keep spare keys for their secret basements of hiding all the shit that they're not supposed to own." Darcy pulls her phone out again, holds it up and waves it around, trying to find a place where she gets reception. "The stuff that, as usual, we're only supposed be confirming the existence of, and not touching."

Loki turns around, a truly hideous sculpture in his hands. Darcy's not sure if it's supposed to be a cat or a bucket. "None of this is magic, if you're worried about that."

"Oh, for fuck's sake, you could have said that before."

Loki shrugs a shoulder. "I wanted to see what he hid away down here."

"So we're sent on a mission to confirm a collection of _magical_ artefacts, and we find a bunch of stuff that isn't magical and you want to look at it anyway?"

Another shrug. "Some Midgardians are interesting." He puts the cat-bucket-thing back on the shelf. Crosses the basement in an annoyingly small number of steps, and damn those long legs of his.

Leaning over Darcy, he presses a hand to the door. This close, she can smell the musk of him, and something else, something light and sweet. Something familiar.

"You've been spending time with Lauren again?" Darcy asks.

Loki looks down at her. "She reminds me of some of the women of Asgard. She's quiet, and she's clever. And she knits."

"Oh, she knits. Is that all a girl has to do to get into your pants?" Darcy flushes as soon as the words are out. Because, like it not, she's been in his pants twice now in separate incidents. Not that either events have happened, for all that Loki talks about them.

Green light flares around Loki's fingers. He raises his eyebrows, his lips already curving into a triumphant smile. "And see, the door-" He blinks. The green light pulses again.

"Does nothing?" Darcy asks. "Wow. That _is_ amazing."

Loki moves closer to the door. In the process, he manages to both move closer to Darcy, and align his groin so it's basically at her eye level. She looks away, but not quickly enough not to notice that he looks like he's gone commando today. She wonders if that was meant as a special treat for the clever and quiet Lauren.

And _God_, she wonders why she even cares. This is Loki, and it's not like she's actually interested in him. I mean, sure he's kind of hot, and he's kind of awesome in bed, but it's not like there aren't other guys, and-

Darcy breaks her train of thought, aware that Loki is staring down at her, faintly perplexed. "What?"

"The door is locked," Loki says.

"No shit, Sherlock." Hm, her swear jar was going to be _full_ when she gets home. If she gets home. "I think I've been telling you that."

Loki sits down next to her on the step. His crotch is thankfully away from her face now, but he's sitting so close that she can feel his body heat, smell the musk of his skin. "My magic cannot open it. Which means that the owner has cast a counter-spell on the door."

"Or that the door itself is a magic object." Darcy rakes her hair back from her face. "Shit. Well, I guess we can confirm our investigation. If we don't suffocate down here first."

"Oh, there is adequate ventilation," Loki says, oh so helpfully pointing out the vents high on the walls. "I suspect he didn't not wish his precious items to grow mould. The air down here is quite clean and pure, in fact."

"Yay?" Darcy stands, and crosses the room, her eyes moving over the shelves. "I don't even get why any of this stuff is down here, anyway."

"Maybe they belonged to his family." There's an unexpected sadness in Loki's voice when he speaks. "Maybe some belonged to him when he was a child, and dreamed of a happier life."

"And maybe he bludgeoned all of his enemies to death with them and keeps them as souvenirs," Darcy says acidly. "He's not exactly a hero."

Loki looks down at his hands.

"Anyway, I don't have any cell coverage down here. So I guess we just have to wait until someone comes and rescues our asses. Yet again." Darcy sits down on the floor, leans back against a shelf. Something rattles behind her, and she reaches back, withdraws a bottle of red wine caked with dust. "Hey, there's alcohol!"

"I'm not certain that drinking is a good idea."

"Screw good ideas." Darcy holds out the bottle. "C'mon, magic it open? I'll share."

Loki heaves a sigh, but he takes the bottle from her.

#

Two bottles of wine later, the room is spinning pleasantly around Darcy.

True, she didn't drink even half of that, maybe not even a third. Bloody Loki tossed back the stuff like it was water, and of course it didn't affect him at all. _His loss_, Darcy thinks. She may be locked in a basement, and she may be looking down the barrel of getting chewed out yet again by Fury, but right now she doesn't care at all.

Loki is sitting on the other side of the basement, legs stretched out in front of him. He's wearing yet another one of his tailored suits, the jacket and trousers both dusty from the basement now. At least this time Darcy's cover wasn't a maid. No, this time she was a florist, and at least got to wear something not made out of nylon.

And since when does she even care about clothes, anyway? Darcy has always been the kind of girl who just threw on whatever was comfortable. Sure, she liked dressing up sometimes, but she was always more than happy to get out of those clothes and into sweats as soon as she got home.

She flops down on her back on the floor. The concrete is cold beneath her, reminding her that she's only wearing a light dress. It feels all too damn much like the cave incident, and she focuses on thoughts of fires, of hot chocolate, of snuggling before the fire with hot chocolate and-

"What are you thinking?" she asks Loki. She just wants to stop that train of thought, so she just says the first thing that comes out of her mouth. And in typical Darcy style, it's something supremely stupid.

Loki looks at her. Is she imagining it, or are his eyes just slightly red? Maybe the wine was more potent than she thought.

"God, just ignore me," she says. She closes her eyes; the room still spins, and she smiles. "I know what you think of me."

"And what is that?" Loki's voice comes from close by, and she opens her eyes to see him suddenly lying next to her.

"Dude, that's just wrong," she says. "You owe me like a year of my life. Or at least some chocolate."

He laughs. That damn laugh of his is just as bad as his smile. Why couldn't he just be ugly, or have a horrible nasal voice or something?

"You think I'm an idiot," Darcy says, closing her eyes again. "You don't think anything of humans in general, and I'm pretty much somewhere way down on the ladder for you. Like, humans are all walking in the sun being happy stupid people, and I'm down grubbing in the dirt. And for some idiotic reason, you requested me as a training partner, and now you're stuck with me. Well, except that you're not, because I expect if you asked Fury, he's reassign you to someone else. Gotta keep the ex-god pleased, or else he'll try to take over the world again and all of that."

Silence for a long moment. She cracks an eye open, expecting to see Loki glaring at her. Instead, he's staring at the ceiling, his expression thoughtful.

"I do not think of Midgardians - of _humans_, so. Least of all you, Darcy."

"Oh really? Then why do you always treat me as though I'm something you want to scrape off the sole of your shoe?"

He props himself up on an elbow, looks down at her. It's disconcerting, and she realises that he's moved close enough that she can smell him again. And why does she even know what he smells like, anyway? Why does she feel like she could pick that scent out in a thousand different ones?

"Tell me, Darcy, that night. After we…changed. What did you do when you were alone?"

Darcy flushes, knows he can see it. "Um. Nothing. What did you do?"

"As you requested. I neither undressed you, nor looked at any part of you. I sat in a chair in your study and I read a book. Made some notes. You'll find them if you look."

"You read one of my books?" Darcy asks. "Um, which one?"

"You'll have to find it. But I must say, I found it most…intriguing. There are many things I would ask you about it."

"So ask."

"When you find it." He flashes her a quick smile. "So…nothing? Remembering that I forbade you nothing."

So he had been aware of that. Darcy swallows hard. She doesn't want to tell him, but the room is still spinning, and the words are crowding up in her throat. "I wasn't going to look, but it was just…_there_. It's not really that easy to ignore."

Loki raises an eyebrow. "You touched yourself?"

Darcy turns away from him, curls on her side.

She hears him move, and when he speaks, his lips are close to her ear, so close that she can feel the rush of his breath against her skin. "And how did it feel?"

"It felt…" He moves again, pressing his body up against her back. His hardness presses against her behind, and then he trails his fingers down along the outside of her thigh, moves them across to where her thighs press against each other, trails them higher again. And god help her, she's already wet, her hips already canting forward even though he's barely touched her. "It felt good. Different." His hand has stopped moving an inch from the apex of her thighs. He splays his fingers over her thigh, his thumb brushing in small circles. "You really didn't do anything?"

"You asked me not to."

"And you obeyed? I didn't think obedience was exactly your strong suit. You do what you want and all of that."

He laughs, the sound shivering down her spine. She presses back against his hardness, and is gratified by a soft hum from deep in his throat. "I will obey orders, if it pleases me."

"Like not touching the magic objects?"

"Like not touching." He trails his fingers slowly upwards, stops again.

Darcy closes her eyes again, tries to marshall her thoughts. The wine is beginning to wear off a little, though the position of Loki's hand is still making it extraordinarily difficult to think clearly.

"What the hell are we doing, Loki?" she asks. "We just fuck when you want to, and then ignore each other the rest of the time?"

His weight against her is abruptly gone, and when she looks over her shoulder, she sees that he's back sitting on the other side of the basement.

"I seem to recall you throwing things at me," he says dryly. "Unless that counts as ignoring someone?"

Darcy hauls herself up, kneels next to him. "Seriously, what are we doing? I mean, I'm pretty sure there's something here." She waves her hand vaguely through the air between them. "Or am I just crazy?" Loki says nothing. "Okay, I'm just crazy, then. And you're probably banging Lauren and wishing that maybe you were-"

Whatever her brain has been planning on adding to that spiel, it is silenced by the crush of Loki's mouth against hers. The rooms spins, and when it settles, she's cradled in Loki's lap, her breasts crushed against his chest. He holds her tight, his grip on her waist so hard that she suspects that she'll have bruises. Bruising, too, are his kisses, his lips and tongue almost brutal as they claim hers.

Darcy rocks against him, acutely aware that all that there is between them is the fabric of her underwear and his trousers. His hands leave her waist, and he drags his fingers up her thighs, pressing hard enough that there's some pain with the pleasure. His lips leave hers, and she lets her head fall back as he kisses his way down her throat, sucks hard at the place where her shoulder meets her neck, bites at the skin over her collarbones.

And then his fingers are hooking into the elastic of her underwear, and he's tearing the flimsy fabric away. He eases her away from him with a hand on her hip, his other hand moving directly to her core. There's no teasing this time, just the hard drive of his fingers deep into her as his mouth comes down on hers again. Darcy whimpers, pushing back against his fingers as hard as she can.

She's the one who unbuckles his belt, unzips his trousers, frees his cock from its confines. He's rock hard in her hand, and she employs as little gentleness as he did. As she pumps her fist, he pushes up against her, the combined movements so harsh that they must border on pain for him, too. Darcy pulls back, gazes into his face. His eyes are unfocused, his lips parted, his breath coming hard. She twists her thumb over his glans, feels the drops of precum gathering there. Waits until he focuses on her, then lifts her thumb to her mouth, licks it clean.

He grabs her again, pulls her back into his lap. Lines himself up with her, and then pulls her down hard, sinking deep in a single thrust. There's some pain with the stretch, but Loki gives Darcy no chance to adjust, just begins thrusting deep and hard. His mouth moves back to her neck, sucking and biting, and he slides a hand between them, fingers circling over her clit.

It's all too much, and Darcy feels her orgasm building almost immediately. She wants to slow down, to make it last. She tries to pull away slightly, but Loki just sinks his teeth into her skin, pulls her down even harder, his fingers moving faster. And then she's crashing hard into an orgasm so intense that it rides that pleasure-pain barrier again. Her cries echo around the basement as Loki reaches his own fulfilment. Unlike her, he is oddly silent, but she feels his teeth break through the skin of her shoulder, drawing blood.

Loki remains buried within her as their heartbeats slow, their breathing returns to normal. There's something almost sordid about it, fucking - and she can't call what they just did _anything_ else - in a basement, still mostly clothed. It feels like the kind of thing that you did when you were trying to hide a relationship.

Is Loki trying to hide this, whatever the hell it was?

A sound outside the locked door, and Darcy pulls away from Loki. She looks around, but she can't see her underwear anywhere. Gives them up as a lost cause, and smooth down her skirt, fixes her hair as best as she can with her fingers. In her peripheral vision, she can see Loki rearranging himself.

The door opens, revealing Clint. "You guys really need to stop touching things," he says.

"That's what I keep saying," Darcy says, forcing a grin.

Clint frowns slightly. "Are you okay?"

"Fine. Just needing fresh air." She doesn't look back, just gathers up her handbag and what contents she can find, moves past Clint, leaving both he and Loki behind.

She moves through the house, hearing the other SHIELD agents moving through the rooms. She smiles to Natasha, keeps going until she's out of the house, walking down the street.

She manages not to cry until she's a block away.


	4. Running to Nowhere

"Seriously, the first bus to anywhere," Darcy says. "And I mean anywhere."

The woman behind the counter - her name badge says that she's Rhonda - scans her computer screen. She taps it with one lacquered fingernail. "There's only one bus on the lot right now. But if you wait a few hours, you could go to-"

"I don't want to wait. And I don't care. I'll take a ticket on the bus that's here. I don't care if it's going straight to hell, so long as it's leaving here."

Rhonda takes Darcy's money, takes her time printing out the ticket. She pushes the ticket and Darcy's change across the counter. "Whoever it is that you're running from, he or she isn't worth it, honey. Believe me, they never are."

Darcy shoves her change into her pocket, pulls her overnight bag up onto her shoulder. "I'm not running."

Rhonda just nods. "I said that I needed space five years ago when I came here. And how here I am, alone. And he went into therapy, and he's the one with the house and three kids."

"I don't need space. I just need…" Darcy shrugs.

"Space?" Rhonda smiles. "It's okay, honey. Just make sure you keep enough money for a return ticket, that's all. And don't make the same mistake I did. Don't let go of a good thing, even if the good is buried. Sometimes they just need help finding it."

Darcy heads for the lot where the bus waits. She folds her ticket so she can't see the destination, and makes sure she doesn't look at the sign on the front of the bus. She truly doesn't care where she's going. A bus route means that there will be some kind of civilisation, even if it's just a motel and a bar. And that's all she wants right now. A place where she can be alone. Where she can think.

She picks a seat near the back of the bus, sets her bag on the empty seat next to her. There's one other passenger on the bus - an old man in the front seat, already asleep, his mouth slack and his false teeth on the verge of falling out.

Darcy looks out of the window. She can just see a sliver of Avengers Tower, its lights bright against the pre-dawn sky. Loki is there somewhere, perhaps sleeping, perhaps working on one of those weird clockwork sculptures. She doesn't know why, but in her mind, she rarely thinks of him sleeping. He's always brimming with so much mercurial energy, it seems impossible that he should ever stop moving or thinking long enough to sleep.

Curling up in her seat, she fishes her iPod out of her bag, slips her headphones into her ears. She sets the player to shuffle, as uncaring of what she listens to as she is of the bus's destination. She just wants enough noise to drown out the world.

#

The motel room is tiny, but it's clean.

Darcy breathes a sigh of relief as she closes and locks the door. She had feared the worst when she'd seen the motel from the road. The neon sign was broken, and the front office almost totally overgrown with some kind of ivy, with just a small space cleared for the window. Inside, she had found a teenage boy tending reception. He hadn't met her eyes when she inquired about rates, and hadn't asked her name or for her to sign in, had just taken her cash and handed her a key.

She had paid for a single night, and the boy had assured her that she could just pay night by night. Looking around the room, she suspected that more people rented these rooms out by the hour. It was the kind of place she could easily imaging a pair of lovers sneaking away for an afternoon, a night.

She sets down her overnight bag, occupies herself for a few minutes unpacking. She takes out her wallet, counts her money. Remembering Rhonda, she slips out several notes and tucks them into the lining of her bag. Not that she intends on actually going back, of course.

That thought hits her like ice running through her veins. Because she actually has no idea _what_ she intends.

A week had passed since the incident in the basement. A week in which Loki had alternated between ignoring her and being utterly professional. They had been sent out on two more assignments, and each time Darcy had made certain that she and Loki were never together in a place that they could get locked into. Let Loki go alone to investigate any potential magic objects, knowing that he would touch them, no matter what she said.

The worst part is that he hadn't even noticed.

The previous night, the SHIELD employees and Avengers currently in residence had gathered, as per usual for a Friday night. It was Pepper's idea, to encourage team bonding. None of the Avengers had been there that night, but Loki had, dapper as always in one of his damn expensive suits. Darcy had gone, because she knew it was expected of her.

She had spent most of the night sitting in a corner sipping slowly from a single glass of wine, just watching Loki. Lauren had appeared midway through the evening, and had tailed Loki everywhere, her hand curling around his arm now and again. She had consumed wine steadily through the night, growing more and more unsteady on her heels. When Lauren had stumbled, catching Loki around the waist to keep from falling, he had let her. And more, his arm had moved around her waist, remained there.

Lauren had peered around Loki, then, and seen Darcy in the corner. Smiled crookedly.

Loki, in turn, had not looked at Darcy once.

Darcy had fled then, returning to her apartment. She had showered, then lain in bed, wide awake, watching the shadows crawling across the ceiling. The sky had only begun to lighten when she had hauled herself out of bed, packed her bag and left the Tower. Deliberately left all of her ID behind, along with her phone. All she brought was cash and her iPod, as well as a few light books.

Now, she was in a motel room in a town that she didn't even know the name of. Outside the motel room window, she could see a dusty street, a diner named _Ma's _ opposite. The sky above was a clear, pure blue.

She could be anywhere. She could be nowhere.

She lies down on the bed, the nylon bedspread sliding beneath her weight. The curtains move in the breeze from the air conditioner, shadows undulating across the cracked ceiling.

Maybe tomorrow she'll book this room for another night. Maybe she'll buy a ticket on the first bus going anywhere. Maybe she'll keep on doing that over and over until she runs out of money.

_And what then_? a voice asks in her mind.

Darcy turns over, facing away from the window. The opposite wall holds a tiny, battered desk and chair that someone has tried to paint white, but the white is flaking away in chunks, revealing the raw wood beneath. A yellowing glass vase rests on top of the desk, a clutch of cheap silk daisies held within. There's a notepad and a pen, both cheap and flimsy. Next to the desk, a tiny fridge, its door scarred and dented. The wall above holds a painting of an anonymous desert scene that could be anywhere in the world.

She could be anywhere in the world.

She could _go_ anywhere in the world. All she has to do is find herself a job somewhere. She can waitress, she can work as a secretary. Hell, she can sling burgers, if it comes to it. She never has to go back to the Tower. She never has to go back to Loki.

She should feel free.

She tells herself that she does.

#

A glass of beer is set down before her, foam overflowing onto the tiny table.

Darcy looks up at the man who stands next to her. For a moment, she sees a tall, slender man, with dark hair and green eyes, and her heart skips. Then she blinks, and it is another man standing there. He is as tall, but muscular, his hair dark blonde and cropped short. His warm brown eyes are the kind that smiles when he does.

Darcy pops her headphones out of her ears. "I didn't order anything," she says.

The man smiles, and damn, but he has a pretty smile. "And I'm not a waiter," he says. He hooks his fingers into the belt loops of his jeans. "I just thought you looked like you could do with a drink, that's all. Nothing creepy, not even trying to hit on you. Unless you want me to," he adds, his grin twisting in an endearingly boyish fashion. "I'm Leo, and I'm over there. If you want to be alone, it's all cool, and I hope you enjoy the drink. And if not…I'm over there."

Darcy watches him as he crosses the bar and rejoins his group of friends. They all, Leo included, look to be around her age, perhaps one or two years younger. And they're laughing, and drinking, and enjoying themselves in a way that she realises she hasn't seen for a long time. In SHIELD, it's all sarcasm and digs, when it's not the end of the world or strange alien artefacts doing strange alien things.

Picking up her beer, she takes a sip and is pleasantly surprised. She's not much of a beer drinker in general, because so much of what people tended to drink tasted like little more than coloured water, but this one is good. She'd lay her bets that it was a microbrew of some kind, and makes a mental note to find out where it was brewed before she leaves.

If when leaves. When she leaves.

Across the room, Leo stands with his back to her. He has the kind of build that suggests that he's earned his muscles from some kind of hard work, and his cropped hair has the kind of wave that she suspects would become tight ringlets if he grew it long enough. He reminds her of the kinds of guys she'd always gone for. Tall and strong, sunny and happy and warm.

Totally the opposite of Loki.

And she swears under her breath, then, because she promised herself that she was just going to go out to a bar, have a drink and soak in some atmosphere. Maybe talk to some people if she felt like it, otherwise just find a quiet corner with her iPod and a book.

She has the quiet corner. She has the iPod and the book, though she's barely read a page, even though it's the lightest and the fluffiest of the books she brought along.

Darcy takes another drink. Her hand moves towards her pocket by instinct before she remembers that she left her phone back in her apartment in New York. She wonders if anyone has actually called it, looking for her. She doubts it. The only person who's likely to is Jane, and her weekends are always taken up by Thor. Not that she and Jane had ever actually been friends.

Sitting here, working her way slowly through the beer, she's wondering why she even stayed. Why she opted to join SHIELD. When she was younger, she'd just wanted to work at something that made the world a better place. Something where she could spend her weekends wrapped up reading. Maybe get married, maybe have children. She just wanted to be happy.

And what about any of this made her happy?

She tucks her iPod into her pocket, picks up her beer and crosses the bar to Leo.

He smiles when he sees her, slips his arm around her shoulders. She leans into the warmth of his body, and she smiles back.

#

Darcy drops the keys for the second time, giggling uncontrollably. "I think someone broke my key," she says, picking them up again.

Leo curls his arm around her waist, his hand closing over hers, and helping her to slide the key into the lock. His hands are shaking just as much as hers, but together they manage it. She ushers him into the motel room, flinging her arms wide.

"Welcome to my kingdom," she says, laughing.

Leo closes the door, falls into a surprisingly graceful bow, given his muscular frame. "My Queen."

Darcy watches him as he straightens in another graceful move. In the bar, she hadn't noticed that grace. She suspects that he's a great dancer, and great at other things, too.

He smiles. "My Queen, may I have permission to useth the royal bathroom? Mine bladder is heavy with drink."

Darcy points at the door. "Useth away."

He vanishes into the tiny room, and she flops down onto the bed. The curtains are still open, and the lights from a passing car play across the ceiling. She rolls over, finds the cheap radio on the bedside table. Turns it on, and scrolls through the stations until she finds something that isn't totally horrible. She wishes she had some way to play her iPod, but she only has her headphones.

When Leo emerges, his hair is damp, the longest locks near his ears curling against his skin. Darcy shifts her weight, and realises that her bladder is also heavy.

"I think I need to freshen up as well," she says.

Leo holds the door open for her.

In the bathroom, she takes care of her bladder. Checks her reflection, runs her hands through her hair. Checks her breath, briefly considers brushing her teeth but figures that's probably too obvious. Besides, he's been drinking as much as she has.

She's never been one for one-night-stands, but right now, it feels like just what she needs. Some warmth, someone who just wants to be with her for the night, if just for the physical connection. And Leo seems like a good enough guy, so maybe there would even be more nights.

She runs through a mental list. She's been taking her pill, so she's protected on that front, and she has condoms in her purse as a matter of course, not that she's ever needed to use them for something like this. It's just a habit that she picked up in college because everyone else did it, and right now, she sends a mental thank you to all of the girls who actually used their stashes, and reminded her that the damn things could expire and she needed to replace them frequently.

Something moves in the corner of her eye, and she turns quickly, but there's nothing there. It must have just been an insect, she decides. But suddenly the effects of the beer are gone, and she feels stone cold sober.

She meets her eyes in her reflection. _Did_ she want to do this?

"Yes," she says. "Yes, I do."

_And fuck you, Loki_, she adds silently, fluffing her hair again.

Leo is sitting on the bed when she enters the motel room again. He's taken off his shoes, but is otherwise is still fully dressed. He's fiddling with the radio, twisting the dial gently as he tries to hone in on a station. Finally, he manages to get it tuned where he wants, and soft classical music fills the room.

"I wouldn't have guessed you for classical," Darcy says, pulling off her own shoes and kicking them into the corner.

"It's the only station that doesn't have an obnoxious DJ who'll cut over the music screaming every five minutes," Leo says, putting the radio back on the bedside table.

Darcy joins him on the bed, sitting cross-legged. She's aware of the fact that her clothing and skin smells like the bar: stale smoke and staler beer. She suddenly wishes that she'd sent Leo off to get more beer or something so she could have had time to have a shower.

Leo doesn't seem to care, because he slides his arms around her, lifts her into his lap. And he's so very warm, his arms and chest enclosing her in a sphere of warmth. She leans into him, curls her arms around his neck.

"Hi," she says.

He slides his hands down the length of her back, rests them on the swell of her hips. Makes an appreciative humming sound. "Hi."

His lips approach hers, and Darcy leans into the kiss. She expects something hard, but Leo is gentle, his lips barely brushing over hers. His hands slide up and down her spine, slow and languid, as though they had all day to explore each other. As though they were actual lovers, not two strangers who are spending a single night together.

Leo slides a hand up her ribs, curves his fingers over the swell of her breast. And suddenly it's too gentle, and she's aware of just how _wrong_ this is, how much she doesn't want this.

She pulls back from his kiss, blinking back tears.

"Hey, are you okay?" Leo asks. "Did I do something wrong?"

Darcy shakes her head. "No, actually, you're lovely. Really lovely. But I just can't do this."

He smiles that beautiful warm smile, and she feels a pang of actual regret. "It's the guy you're running from, isn't it?"

"I…it's complicated."

He slides away from under her. Puts his shoes back on, and crosses to the other side of the room, where he scribbles on the notepad on the desk.

"If things get less complicated, feel free to give me a call? Not just for this," he says, gesturing at the bed. "But a real date."

"I'm really sorry," Darcy says. "I didn't mean to lead you on or anything."

"No one promised anything." Leo leans down, kisses her on the forehead. "Don't get me wrong. It would have been nice. More than nice. And if you go back to him, then make sure he's worth you, okay? And if not, give me a call?"

Darcy just nods, and Leo leaves, closing the door quietly behind him.

Darcy flops down onto the bed, wondering what the hell she's doing. The classical music still plays, something by Mozart, she thinks. She reaches out and turns it off, then lies back and closes her eyes.

Silence hangs thick in the room.

"Well, he was _nice_."

Darcy's eyes fly open, and she sits up so fast that she manages to slide right off the nylon bedspread, landing in and undignified pile on the floor. And at Loki's feet.

He's sitting in the chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him. For once, he's not wearing a suit, but rather something like a scaled-down version of his Asgardian armour. It gives him a colder look than she's used to, and she feels something like fear move inside her.

"How long have you been there?" Darcy asks, scrambling to her feet.

"Long enough."

"Long enough to get a good floor show?" Darcy's hands are balled into fists, her muscles rigid. "What the fuck is wrong with you? Who the hell _does_ things like this?"

She aims a kick square at his shin.

And her foot goes straight through him. And she overbalances, and ends up on the floor. Again.

She pulls herself back up with as much dignity as she can muster - which isn't much - and stands with her back to him. "Just get out of here. Leave me _alone_."

She waits for the count of ten. Then twenty. Turns around.

He's gone.

Darcy draws in a deep, shuddering breath, releases it slowly. She's not going to cry, dammit, she is _not_ going to cry.

Cold shivers against her skin, and then hands are turning her around, a too-familiar body pressing her down onto the bed. Loki manages, of course, not to slide off the damn bed. He moves quickly, before she has a chance to think, his body pinning hers, feet hooked around her shins to hold her legs down, his hands holding her wrists against the mattress.

It registers then that he's _here_. Physically here, not just projecting.

"I didn't think you were allowed to teleport," Darcy says. "I thought that was an ability they had locked away from you."

Loki transfers her wrists to one hand, pulling them above her head. Brushes a lock of hair back from her face with his free hand.

"Darcy, what are you doing?" he asks.

"With my life? Oh, just curing world hunger and attaining world peace. Isn't it obvious?" Darcy fairly spits the words in his face. Turns her face away from his.

He trails his fingers down her cheek, then moves them beneath her jaw, forcing her to look at him. "You're running away."

"You _just_ figured that part out? And, by the way, running away usually involves the thing you're running from staying behind."

He actually looks startled by that. "You're running from _me_?" he asks, his voice barely more than a whisper. "Why?"

Darcy tugs at his hand holding her wrist. "Um, object lesson right here."

His eyes flick up to her hands, then he releases his grip on them. Unhooks his feet from her legs. Darcy shifts, trying to ease the cramps that are already setting into her muscles. And because she is _stupid_, she manages to shift so that Loki's hips slide between her thighs.

And her body - _damn her body_ - is already responding to him, even as she's pissed as hell at him.

"This is fucked up," she says. "This is truly and utterly fucked up."

Loki presses his hips against her, and she feels his hardness.

And that's all it takes. She's tearing at his clothes, feeling something give with a satisfying rip as she pulls his shirt away. He's kissing her like he wants to devour her, pulling her clothes away as rapidly as she's stripping him. There's nothing gentle about any of this, teeth and nails tearing at skin, Loki making this tiny growling noise deep in his throat as she wraps a hand around him, squeezes.

In one fluid movement, Loki flips her over, pulls her up onto her knees. He drops a kiss onto her shoulder on the skin where she's still bruised faintly from his bite during the basement incident, then wraps her hands around the headboard of the bed. Kisses her other shoulder, licks down her spine to the sensitive place between her shoulderblades which makes her writhe beneath him. He smiles against her skin, does it again. This time, his hand curves down around her hip, squeezes hard enough that she just knows she's going to have bruises along her hipbone. Slides his fingers down, grazing over her clit once, then plunging deep inside of her. And damn her, she's so wet that he can slide three fingers in without resistance, and she can feel his pleasure in that as he exhales, shuddering, against her neck.

He removes his fingers, and she looks back at him. He's kneeling behind her, his cock hard and curving up against his stomach. He grins that damnable grin of his, and licks his fingers clean, humming in pleasure.

Darcy turns away, her heartbeat rushing in her ears. Closes her eyes.

Loki kisses up along her spine, slides one hand up along her arm, laces his fingers with hers against the headboard. She feels him line himself up with her, and then he enters her. Just barely, and she wants to grind her teeth in frustration. She tries to thrust back against him, but he holds her hip firmly with his hand, keeping her still.

"Loki, _fuck_."

He kisses the shell of her ear, his tongue flicking against the sensitive skin. "Shhhhh…"

And then he begins to move. He holds her still as he thrusts shallowly, just barely moving at all at first. Slowly, frustratingly slowly, he begins to go deeper and deeper. Darcy is making animalistic sounds, all thought of words gone. There's nothing else in the world right now apart from the two of them, nothing apart from this.

Loki kisses her neck, and suddenly sinks deep, managing to find just the right angle that he sends her into an instant orgasm. And she's _screaming_ from the intensity of it, her fingers clutching at the headboard so hard that she fears it's going to break.

He pauses, buried deep inside her, still hard, and kisses the back of her neck with a gentleness that's almost painful for Darcy to feel. Because gentle is not what she associates with Loki. Gentleness means caring, it means-

She breaks off that train of thought, thrusting back hard at Loki. He's released his grasp on her hip now, though his other hand still clutches at hers. He lets her move now, and Darcy closes her eyes tight, lets her hair hang around her face. If she can't see him, then she can pretend that it's someone else. Anyone else.

Except that she can't, even with her eyes closed. She can smell the smoky musk of him, can feel the slight chill on his skin. Can hear that damn seductive voice of his as he murmurs into her ear.

As she comes a second time, she's crying, tears falling from her lashes to splash against the hideous bedspread.

Loki thrusts hard against her, holds still deep inside as his hips shudder, his breath hot against her neck.

Darcy is still crying when he withdraws from her, turns her around to face her. When he sees her face, he freezes, his face paling. "D-Darcy?"

Darcy curls her legs up to her chest, covers her face with her hands. "Just get out. Get out."

When she uncovers her eyes, he is gone.


	5. Tiny War

The meeting room looks as though it's been the scene of a tiny war. Or maybe a tiny hurricane, Darcy amends. Most of the chairs have been scattered across the floor, and one has actually been thrown into the ceiling, where it still hangs upside-down, its leg caught on something that she can't see. A pool of what she hopes is coffee is drying in the centre of the long table, and the sideboard, which usually holds a full coffee service, has been swept almost clean. All that remains is the stainless steel coffee pot, which has been crushed. She looks closer, and sees actual finger marks embedded in the metal.

Tiny war, then.

"I was wondering how long it would be before you came back," a familiar voice says.

Darcy jumps. Tony had been sitting so so completely motionless at the single chair left at the table, and she had been so distracted by the chaos, that she hadn't noticed him.

Darcy walks across to the sideboard. Something crunches beneath her shoes; she assumes that it's the smashed remains of the coffee cups. She touches the coffee pot. It's still warm, and she wonders for a single wild moment if she could manage to pour out any remaining coffee. Everyone knows that the best coffee is kept for the meeting room. And almost everyone slips in here from time to time to snaffle a cup.

And Darcy might slip in a bit more often than everyone else. And she might have occasionally accidentally crashed a few meetings, but this is the first time she's walked into a war zone.

"What happened?" she asked.

Tony grabs a chair, sets it upright and pulls it over next to him. Pats the seat.

Darcy edges over, sits down on the very edge of the chair.

Tony looks at her for a long time. "I was kind of hoping you could enlighten me about that, Darcy."

"Um. I wasn't even here?"

Tony sits back; she can practically see his brain working. "Well, this is the way I see things. You take off for the weekend. No one can find you, and you didn't tell anyone where you were going. Which isn't normally a problem, but when it turns out that your phone and ID are in your apartment still-"

"Wait, you went into my apartment?" Darcy asks.

Tony holds up his hands. "For once, I can claim innocence. A certain tall, dark and occasionally homicidal SHIELD agent kicked down your door. Then teleported right into the middle of a particularly important meeting threatening to show everyone what their insides look like on the outside if a team wasn't rallied to search for you. Or something along those lines."

Everything grows very still. "_Loki_ kicked down my door?" Her throat is dry, and she swallows, but it does little to relieve the dryness. "Did he…did he hurt anyone?"

"Surprisingly enough, no. Though he really seemed to have a vendetta for that coffee pot." Tony tilts his head. "You know, I think I might get it framed, put it up somewhere with a warning sign."

"But no one came looking for me."

Tony shifts his gaze back to her. "After the coffee pot, we called in Fury. Who, I can tell you, was just _delighted_ to be here. He pointed out, quite correctly, that you had no obligation to tell anyone of your whereabouts on your time off. And so long as we hadn't received an actual threat or random demand, we weren't actually obligated to do anything. That's when the chair got it." Tony looks up at the chair embedded in the city. "It was actually kind of pretty. Like green fireworks."

"Oh."

"You don't seem particularly surprised by any of this." Tony leans forward, elbows on knees. "You want to tell me what's going on?"

Darcy shifts her weight. Crosses her arms over her breasts. "Nothing is going on. I wanted some space away from everything, so I got on a bus. Stayed at a motel, went to a bar. Came back."

Tony leans back again, his posture relaxed and open. "I wasn't asking about your weekend, Darcy."

Darcy looks down at her hands.

"Anyway, Fury is pretty much living up to his name right now. I managed to get Pepper to invent some stuff to keep him occupied for a few days, and hopefully he'll cool down. But I suggest you get this 'nothing' sorted out as soon as possible."

"He's angry at _me_? But I haven't done anything."

"You know, I tried that line with Fury too. More than once. He never believed me, but I never knew why." He stands up, buttons his jacket. "If you want to talk, you might find that I'm a good listener. Or we have counsellors on staff, if you want someone a little less devastatingly attractive." He tugs lightly on the chair embedded in the ceiling, but it doesn't budge. "Huh. That's really caught in there. Anyway, there's something else I have to tell you."

"More good news?"

The corner of his mouth turns up; it looks nothing like a smile. "It's a message from Fury, technically. You and Loki are no longer partnered. A new partner will be found for you from the recruits when someone appropriate comes along. For the time being, you'll assist Natasha and Clint. And boy, do I not envy you that task."

Darcy feels as though a cold wind is blowing through her bones. "Fury decided this?"

Tony tugs at the chair again. Something creaks in the ceiling, but it remains stuck. "I believe the request came from a certain ex-Asgardian prince."

"Oh." The wind becomes ice. "And what about…him?"

Tony shrugs. "He's still officially on the books as an agent, but apart from that, I don't know."

He leaves Darcy there in the ruins of the room. After he closes the door, the chair falls from the ceiling, shatters into a thousand splinters.

#

Natasha and Clint set a breakneck pace, especially in comparison to Loki's way of meandering through his cases. Darcy spends more time in the air than ever before, and is rarely at home for more than one night. It feels good to be busy. Busy means that she has no time to think during the day, and is to tired to do anything but fall into a dead sleep at night.

After a while, she even begins to forget what it is that she doesn't want to think about. Loki himself has apparently vanished. She doesn't hear anything from him or of him.

It's only when she catches sight of someone in green and black, or a tall, slender man walking with a particular kind of self possession that she remembers Loki, that she remembers the _incidents_.

Sometimes, she even thinks that she's happy.

She travels to London with Natasha and Clint, the work itself requiring all of their skills and few of Darcy's. She is set up in a hotel where they drop their notes and reports, and is required to send encrypted transmissions of both through to SHIELD at the end of each day, but other than that, she is free. Clint even thinks that he's doing Darcy a favour, that she's been working too hard.

The first night, Natasha brings a bottle of wine over to Darcy's hotel room. Pours them both a glass, though she only sips at hers.

They sit together in companionable silence for the better part of an hour. Darcy works her way steadily through most of the bottle of wine. Natasha just watches her, says nothing until the bottle is empty.

"So, how long have you and Loki been sleeping together?" she asks.

Darcy almost drops her glass. "How did you know? I mean, what?"

Natasha just gives her a look. "It only takes eyes. Since the cave?"

Darcy sets down her glass. "Does everyone know?"

"All everyone knows is that you and Loki shared body heat in the cave. Clint and Stark had their theories about what else you shared, of course. It's happened again after as well?"

Darcy just nods miserably.

"I'm not going to tell you what or what not to do. You're a grown woman, and one who's smarter than she gives herself credit for. And Loki, well he's trying to be a better man."

"He's trying, all right."

Natasha actually smiles at that one. "Maybe you'd be good for him. Maybe he'd be good for you. Maybe you'd both drag each other down. Which is pretty much the same maybes that apply to anyone."

"It sounds like there's a but in there somewhere. But he's dangerous? Unpredictable? Crazy?"

"You could say that about any of us." Natasha stands, pulls on her coat. She fishes in a pocket, withdraws a folded piece of paper. "But you should take some time. I know what it can be like, when your body wants one thing but your heart and brain knows that it's not always the right thing. Take some time, and be sure of what you want." She holds the paper out to Darcy. "Tell Helena that I sent you. She'll help you out."

Darcy unfolds the paper. "Is this what I think it is?"

Natasha grins. "Absolutely."

#

The next night, Darcy is alone in her hotel room. Natasha and Clint are going to be out of contact for the next day or so, and Darcy has finished all of the work she has to do. Checked her email at least a dozen times, even read through her spam folder. Twice.

She orders room service, which she only picks at. Turns on the television, flips through the movies, turns it off again. Tries to read the book she packed.

All the while she's aware of the discrete black bag sitting on the other side of the room.

Finally, when she can ignore it no more, she pulls the curtains shut, hangs the 'do not disturb' sign on the door. Turns off the overhead light and turns on a lamp, dimming the bulb as far as it will go.

She picks up the black bag and tosses it onto the bed. Kicks off her sweatpants, sits down in her shirt and underwear. Opens the bag.

The address Natasha had sent Darcy to was a tiny store wedged between a bookstore and a lingerie shop. There were no windows, and no signs apart from the letter _H_ emblazoned in gilt on the black door.

When Darcy had knocked, Helena had opened the door almost immediately, as though she had been waiting. She was tall and slender as a model, her blonde hair tucked into a knot, her black suit clearly tailored. She had led Darcy up a flight of stairs, and Darcy had wondered how the woman managed the stairs in her stiletto heels. They were the only suggestion that she was anything but a businesswoman: shining patent leather, the slender heel made from what looked like steel overlaid with filigreed silver.

Helena had led Darcy into a sitting room, poured her tea and offered her cake. Then she had handed Darcy several leather-bound books, and bade her to take her time browsing. If she wanted to handle any particular product, she needed only to type her requests into a tiny laptop, and samples would be provided. Sales would be processed at the end of the appointment.

Darcy had sat down with her tea, wondering if Natasha had sent her to some kind of bordello. Those thoughts were instantly gone - and replaced by much more interesting ones - when she opened the first book. She giggled to herself, aware that she sounded like a damn schoolgirl, because this was nothing more that a very discrete, very classy sex shop. The books were full of catalogues of sex toys, lingerie, costumes and accessories. And way too many things that she had no idea what they even were.

Natasha's words came back to her, then, as she paged through the books. She was drawn to the lingerie, but when she realised that almost everything that caught her eye was emerald green, she set that book aside, turned back to the toy catalogue.

When she saw the description of the vibrator, she knew she was going to buy it. She called Helena back in, and arranged the purchase, no sampling needed.

And now she sat on the bed, the black bag before her. She reached in and withdrew the equally discrete black box from within. Gold lettering along the top formed a single word: _Thor_.

Darcy ripped into the box, withdrew the vibrator. A slip of paper falls out, informing her that this is supposedly an exact replica of the God of Thunder's "hammer". Darcy giggles again, makes a mental note to show this to Jane sometime.

She runs her hand along the shaft of the vibrator, the flesh-coloured silicon giving slightly beneath the pressure. She's owned vibrators before, but nothing that's been specifically made to look lifelike. Now, holding it in her hand, it actually feels kind of creepy.

"Well, I guess I won't know unless I try it," she says to the vibrator. "And you did basically come with Natasha's recommendation."

She turns off the lamp, strips off her clothes and slides beneath the sheets. Turns the switch on the vibrator's motor, plays with the settings for a while until she finds something that she thinks she might like.

She experiments for a while, teasing herself with the toy, playing it against her nipples, running it along her stomach, up and down her inner thighs. By the time she guides it to her centre, she's starting to get wet. Not like she does with someone else, but wet all the same.

She slides the vibrator along her folds, jumps when she first brushes it against her clit. It's almost too intense, and she moves back to her opening, circling it before she begins plunging the vibrator inside. In and out, in and out, just a little deeper each time.

It's certainly turning her on, and she's feeling pleasure begin to grow, but a part of her notes how it feels almost _clinical_. As though she's just pressing buttons, going through the motions. She shoves those thoughts away, switches the vibrator to her other hand, and begins circling her clit with her fingers. And _that_ feels good, and her hips are starting to circle, to thrust into the movements she makes with the vibrator.

At some point she registers that she's getting hot, and she kicks off the bed covers. Moonlight filters in around the edges of the curtains, and when she looks down at herself, her skin looks almost as pale as the sheets on which she lies. She deliberately widens her legs, spreading herself wantonly open, as though there was somebody watching. And that thought is enough to trigger an orgasm. It's not as strong as those she has with a partner, but it's a release all the same. She withdraws the vibrator gently. Probably it's something she needs to practice. she guesses.

She lies back against the pillows, closes her eyes. She can smell the thick musk of her own sex in the room, along with the thin bitterness of her sweat. She knows that she should probably get up and shower, but figures she can enjoy lying here for a little longer, at least.

She tells herself that she enjoys it, that she's relaxed. That she's not craving the length of Loki's body curved against hers, his arms around her.

Except she does, dammit. For all that she doesn't trust him, for all that he treats her like absolute dirt, she still wants him here. More fool she.

The first touch she feels is so light that she hardly notices it. Assumes that it's the air conditioning, a moth.

The next touch is definitely not the air, not a moth. It is skin against skin, a finger trailing up the inside of her thigh. She opens her eyes, catches a glimpse of shadow, of moonlight catching in green eyes. And then his mouth is pressing between her legs, his tongue going directly to her clit, his fingers sliding into her, curling back until he finds just the right spot.

There's no teasing, just his fingers pumping in and out, his tongue alternating flicking and swirling around her clit. And the second orgasm is building before she can even think, and she has to turn her head to muffle her moans into the pillow. He gives her no chance to come down, just keeps working his fingers and his mouth, and she's coming again, _biting _ the pillow this time, hearing the cotton tear between her teeth.

Silence.

"Why did you come here?" she asks, her head still turned away. "Why do you keep doing this?"

His answer, when it comes, is only just audible, the words breathed rather than spoken. "Because you keep calling me."

She turns back to the room, but he is gone, and she is alone. Again.


	6. Like Smoke

Darcy adjusts the bodice - the _very_ _low_ bodice - of her dress, regards her reflection. The girl who looks out of the mirror looks nothing like her. Her eyes are heavily shadowed, her lips deep red. The dress is the same red, velvet hugging her torso and thrusting her breasts up and out. At her hips, the velvet flares out into layered panels of chiffon; if she spins, they flare out, revealing her almost the entirety of her thighs.

She makes a mental note not to do any spinning.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" she asks.

Natasha adjusts Darcy's zip, then steps back, assessing Darcy's reflection. Her own dress is simple black velvet, the knee-length skirt slightly flared. Where Darcy's hair is a mass of curls, Natasha's hair has been pulled back in a simple knot.

"The way you look can be a weapon," Natasha says, smoothing back an errant lock of hair. "If you want to be an effective agent, then you learn to use all the weapons you have."

Darcy turns away from the mirror. "But do my _weapons_ have to be so much on…display?"

Natasha laughs. "You'll have to take that up with Fury. He's the one who engaged the dressmaker."

Darcy's brain immediately provides her with an image of Fury, all scowls and leather, wandering into a prissy dress shop. "I'm going to take up with the fact that he obviously has a Jessica Rabbit fetish," she says, pulling up her bodice again. "And the fact that I had to go and buy a new bra to wear under this."

"Send him the receipt," Natasha says. "They'll cover it."

"SHIELD covers underwear?" Darcy turns back to the mirror, mock pouts. "Well, that's something, at least."

She watches over her shoulder as Natasha does a weapons check, as usual producing knives and guns from places that Darcy doesn't want to think about. Darcy has a gun, too, this time, a tiny one stashed in her handbag.

"I'm still not happy about taking a gun in," Darcy says. "What if they find it?"

"We're there as decoration, remember?" Natasha says. "They'll frisk Clint, but not us." She gives Darcy a quick, unexpected hug. "You'll be fine. You're coming as a distraction so Clint and I can work. The gun is just insurance."

Distraction. That was why Darcy had agreed to this in the first place. It's been a week since the last incident with Loki - if he had been there at all, which she'd had cause to wonder about over the last handful of days. She doesn't put it past her brain to have produced such an elaborate hallucination. There's certainly been no sign of Loki in any of the SHIELD documentation that she's been able to access. It's as though he's fallen off the face of the world.

"I'm going to go and check on Clint," Natasha says. "Knowing him, he's sitting in his room cleaning his weapons and glaring at his suit, hoping that it will spontaneously combust so he doesn't have to wear it. We'll meet you at the car in five?"

After Natasha leaves, Darcy touches up her makeup, though it doesn't need it. Adjusts her dress again, wonders if Fury really will pay for her underwear. Wonders if she can convince him that she needs a massage, too. Or maybe a series of massages, and a few pedicures to boot.

Maybe this whole being a SHIELD agent wasn't going to be such a bad thing. Clint and Natasha were decent to be around, and professional when they were working. She'd get a new partner eventually, and she could move on. Pretend Loki never existed, that none of the incidents had ever happened.

She double checks her appearance, trying to ignore the thought that she wishes that Loki could see her now. It buzzes around her mind like an insect seeking food. She visualises pushing it away physically. Kicking it. Then, with a smile, she imagines the Hulk smashing it.

A car horn sounds outside, and she picks up her purse and hurries through the house, humming to herself. Maybe everything was going to be okay, after all.

#

The casino floor is crowded, and Darcy hesitates in the entrance. She feels exposed in her dress, more scantily cut than anything she usually wears. Clint doesn't hesitate at all, just sets off into the crowd, his eyes on one of the private rooms that open off the main floor.

Natasha curls an arm around Darcy's waist. "Remember, you can be anyone you want to be," she says. "All you have to do is occupy as many of the men as you can. Just flirt, drink a little if you want to, but try not to actually get drunk. I'll keep an eye on you as much as I can, okay?" She squeezes Darcy gently. "You can do this."

She and Darcy walk hand in hand across the casino. Few people look up from their gambling, but several men - and at least one woman Darcy sees - do, their eyes lingering on her. She's glad when they reach the private room. Clint holds the door open as they enter; when it closes again, the buzz of casino sound cuts off abruptly.

The room is large and warmly lit, and holds a long mahogany table surrounded by six chairs. A sideboard holds drinks and food, a waiter standing by. The chair are only half filled, all of the men in tuxedos, cards in their hands. Natasha is instantly smiling, falling into familiar conversation, her words sliding easily between English and what sounds to Darcy like at least three different languages, none of them Darcy recognises.

Within five minutes, both Natasha and Clint have been drawn into whatever card game it is that the men are playing. It kind of looks like poker, Darcy thinks, but she doesn't recognise it. She circles around to the sideboard, exchanges a nervous smile with the waiter. Picks up a glass of champagne, just for something to do with her hands.

She's just taking the first sip when a thick arm comes around her waist; one of the men, pulling her into his lap. "My lucky charm, I think!" he declares to the other men.

Natasha slides Darcy a look, and Darcy smiles. Takes a swallow of champagne. It makes it easier to melt into her role. She decides that she's an actress, one who works only when she has to, having inherited enough money from her parents in order to be comfortable.

The evening passes in a blur. Darcy is passed between the men several times, always coming back to the first man. He declares that he wins only when she's in his lap, and she giggles and pretends that she needs to shift her weight.

It's surprisingly easy to pretend to be more drunk than she is. Even easier to pretend to be someone else. She feels as though she's shucked off something that's been weighing her down. Maybe this is what she was meant to do with her life, after all.

She watches Natasha and Clint work, subtle signals passing between them from time to time, though both remain seemingly deep in conversation with the two men they are seated beside. Soon, the game folds, and the unoccupied men wander off, grumbling about the money that they've lost. Clint and the man he's been talking to vanish next, then Natasha and her partner. Finally, Darcy is left alone, the first man's arm still around her waist.

She slides off his lap, pretends to wobble on her heels. "I think I need to go visit the little girl's room," she says. "Powder my nose."

The man - whose name she still hasn't actually caught - waves a hand, as though he's dismissing her. She stumbles her way to the door, makes her way along the short corridor that leads to the bathroom. She'll visit it, and then she'll slip out and go back to the room, sleep.

She's actually feeling like she's done a good job just before something comes crashing down on her head.

After that, everything is dark.

#

Pain strobes before Darcy's eyes, a red light that fractures the darkness, pulsing in time with her heartbeat. She tries to narrow down the source of the pain, but it seems like every part of her body is hurting.

She can smell copper, and when she manages to move her hand, she feels a disturbingly deep pool of what she hopes isn't blood beneath her.

Brings her hand to her nose. It's blood. Her blood.

She tries to relax, tries to think. Her heartbeat is loud in her ears, and she focuses on her breath. Knows that she needs not to panic. Whatever has happened, Clint and Natasha will find her. They'll save her.

They'll save her.

#

When she comes to awareness next, she's cold. The blood beneath her is cooling, too. Her heart is beating slower, the drumbeat of it louder in her ears.

And she knows now that no one is coming. Whatever has happened to her, it's happened to Clint and Natasha, too. Maybe they're bleeding to death, too. Maybe they're already dead.

She's bleeding to death.

She's dying.

The worst part is that it doesn't seem to matter.

What difference does it really make to the world, if it loses Darcy Lewis? What difference does she really make?

She closes her eyes, listens to her heartbeat. Tries to count between beats to figure out if its slowing.

It's slowing.

She's bleeding to death.

She's dying.

The space between heartbeats lengthens, silence spinning out. She's not cold now, at least. She doesn't feel anything.

Except for one thing. She wishes that she wasn't alone.

And then a light flares in the darkness, a green light only a little brighter than a candle. Looking at it sends a fresh spike of pain through her, and she moans. Clearly she's still closer to life than death, if she can still feel pain. She closes her eyes, wills it away.

The light dies, and then she feels a hand on her forehead. A voice, which sounds far away, rising and falling like the waves of an unseen ocean.

She doesn't open her eyes again. She cannot. All she wants is to not be alone, and to drift away.

#

Waking feels like clawing her way out of a deep, dark pit. When she opens her eyes, it is to blinding white, the fluorescent lights bringing hot tears to her eyes. She forces herself to keep her eyes open, blinking frantically. Slowly, her eyes adjust, and she is able to see where she is.

Everything is white, and the air is thick with the scent of antiseptic. A hospital.

"So, not dead, after all?"

Darcy turns her head towards the voice, gritting her teeth against the stab of pain that the movement brings. Tony Stark sits in the chair next to her bed, his suit rumpled, his tie looped over the back of the chair.

"I feel happy," Darcy croaks. Tony laughs, clearly appreciating the Monty Python reference. She clears her throat, but her voice remains a rasp. "Natasha and Clint?"

"They're fine. You're the one they were after, looks like."

"Me? Why?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. Natasha thinks it's pure payback. She introduced you that night as her cousin. And to say that those guys have a vendetta against the Black Widow is to put it mildly."

Darcy turns her face back to the ceiling. The flickering lights remind her of a memory she can only half remember: a light in the darkness, a hand on her forehead. "How did he find me?"

A shuffling sound makes her turn her head. Tony is twisting his tie around his fingers, releasing it, twisting it again. "He said that you called him there."

Darcy looks around the room as much as her stiff muscles allow, half expecting him to emerge, grinning, from a corner. There's nothing but the medical equipment.

"He's not here, Darce," Tony says. "He said that he thought you wouldn't want him to be. Pepper, of all people, actually argued with him about that. But you know him. He does what he wants."

Darcy smiles weakly. "That he does."

Tony drags the tie through his fingers again. "I don't know what's going on between you two, but I worry about you, Darce. If you ever need a way out, an escape, well, they're kind of my speciality. You can always call me."

"What if I'm too lazy to go to the fridge and get a beer? Can I call you then?"

Tony laughs, stuffs his tie into his pocket. "Get some rest, Darce. We'll see you back at work when you're ready. Take as much time as you need, think about things. Figure out what you want."

He leaves Darcy, then. She stares at the lights, listens to the drip of fluids through her IV.

_Figure out what I want. As if it's that easy._

#

In the end, it is a full two weeks before they let her out of the hospital. The doctors command her to take another two weeks resting at home, that order, she suspects, having originated with Tony. She doesn't hurt much any more, but she's so damn _tired_ that she's happy to take the orders.

The first night at home, she sleeps for sixteen hours straight. She does not dream.

The second night, she lies wakeful. She'd napped on and off during the day, her exhaustion too great for her to do much more than move between the couch, bathroom and kitchen. The latter, she had found stocked generously with all of her comfort foods. Tony's hand, she suspects, or maybe Pepper's. She owes them, big time.

She turns over in bed, closes her eyes. Counts to a hundred forwards, then backwards. Counts sheep. Focuses on relaxing all of her muscles one by one. There's a dull aching in her joints that tells her that she needs to sleep, even if her mind doesn't want to.

She's actually beginning to drift off when she feels the mattress move, springs creaking as though they've taken someone's weight.

The faint scents of smoke and leather tell her who it is. She doesn't turn, just breathes slow and even, wondering what he'll do.

She doesn't know what she expects, really. Maybe that he'll just check on her, then vanish again.

She does know that she doesn't expect him to lie down behind her, curve his body against hers. He is warm, even through the layers of sheets and blankets that separate them. He doesn't try to touch her, doesn't do anything but lie there, his breathing matching hers.

"You should sleep, Darcy," he says softly. "It will heal you."

"But I-"

His fingers rest on her temple; warmth emanates from the touch, and she is sinking down swiftly into sleep, unable to finish what she was saying.

The last thing she is aware of before sleep claims her entirely is the gentle press of his lips against her shoulder, his arm coming around her waist.

#

For two weeks, Darcy rests.

During the day, she grows more and more bored watching daytime television. And every night, she lies awake until Loki arrives. After the first time, he does not say anything, just places his fingers against her temple, sends her into that deep, healing sleep. Every night, he kisses her shoulder, curves an arm around her waist.

Every morning, he is gone, only the lingering warmth and scent of smoke and leather evidence that he'd been there at all.

#

Finally, she returns to work. She is forbidden from field work, put to work instead transcribing field reports from other agents. She chafes at the assignment at first, but finds that she actually likes being in the office environment after a while.

She does not see Loki once, does not find anything about him in any of the reports. It is as though he's vanished like smoke from SHIELD. When she manages to corner Fury once to ask him, he just shakes his head and moves off. Whatever Loki is doing is classified, well above her level.

She wonders why they were ever partnered, if she was only ever intended for office work, and Loki for high level classified work. None of it makes any sense.

Nothing makes any sense, these days.

She begins to take sleeping pills at night, and if Loki visits her still not she is well, she does not know.

#

On a night no different from any other, Darcy sits on the side of her bed. She's wearing her usual oversized t-shirt as a nightgown, her glasses off and her hair loose. In one hand she holds a small blue pill. In the other, a bottle of water.

In the other room, the television is on. Another habit she has acquired, leaving it on all day and night. _The Matrix_ is playing, the volume low, and she can hear scraps of dialogue floating through the rooms.

… _you take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe…_

What _does_ she believe? What does she actually want to know?

She sets the pill down on her bedside table. Pads through the apartment to turn off the television, returns to her bed, lies down and waits.

#

It is 3am when he finally appears. Darcy is drifting in and out of a light sleep, but she comes fully awake when she feels the mattress behind her shift as it takes his weight. He doesn't move towards her, doesn't say anything.

"Why do you keep coming here?" Darcy asks.

The mattress shifts again as he stands, and panic spears through her at the thought that he's simply teleported away. When she turns over, he's still there, though. He looks tired, and his black clothing hangs loose on his frame.

Darcy sits up in bed, the covers falling to her waist. "Why do you keep coming here? Why did you save me?"

He says nothing. His face is shadowed, and she cannot read his expression.

"I'm just some stupid little mortal, right?" she asks. "Made to be ruled? Are you just torturing me? What's the point of all of this? Whatever the hell this even is." Anger is cresting in her, and she grabs the first thing she can find - her water bottle - and flings it at him. He makes no move to dodge it, and the bottle smacks into his shoulder, falls to the floor with a sloshing sound. "I don't even know why you're working with SHIELD. Why you asked for me as a partner. I don't understand you at all."

He moves backwards a little, and the moonlight catches in his eye, silvering the green. "When you were a child, did you go to church?"

Darcy stares at him. "What? What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

"Did you?"

She flings out her hands. "My mother was Catholic. She dragged me along sometimes."

"But you never believed, did you? You never prayed to that God."

A sliver of cold lodges in Darcy's chest, and it is suddenly hard to breathe. She remembers a little girl kneeling down beside her bed, the floor cold beneath her bare knees. Eyes on the books stacked next to the bed, all borrowed from the library. Greek mythology, Norse mythology. "No," she whispers.

"No." Loki kneels down next to the bed, arranges his hands in prayer position. His eyes are fixed on Darcy. "You prayed to Loki. To the trickster god who could make everyone pay for what they'd done. Who could bring light into the darkness. Who could save you."

"But you're not a god. None of you are."

"Thoughts and prayers are power, Darcy, whether their target is a god form or not. Those prayers tied you to me. And I to you."

Darcy backs away, as much as the bed allows her to. "So you're saying that you're here because I _prayed_ to you? It's an _obligation_?"

Loki shakes his head. He climbs up on the bed again. "I'm saying that your prayers opened a door. One I walked through willingly."

"Then why hide it? Why hide me?"

He blinks. "I have hidden nothing."

"Except in the fact that you're quite content to fuck me in private, and then when we're in public, basically pretend you don't know me?" Darcy is yelling now, her voice echoing off the walls. Right now she doesn't care who hears, she just needs to get this anger out. "I don't know about you, but that's not how I want to live. I've done plenty in my life that I could choose to be ashamed of, but you know what? I choose not to." Her fingers are hooked into claws. She's not certain if she wants to claw out Loki's eyes first, or aim lower. "Just because my body has some stupid attraction to you, it doesn't mean that I have to choose to act on it. Maybe those prayers were a door for me, too. One I can choose to close."

Loki's face is still, expressionless. "That is all any of this is to you? _Lust_?"

"What else is it? It's not like you'd actually care about a mortal, right? An ant beneath your boot? You saved me because you were obligated to, right?"

"No." Loki stands up, his body stiff. "Not right, Darcy Lewis."

"Then what is?" she asks in a whisper. She's aware of her heart hammering, loud as a drumbeat in her ears.

He crawls across the bed; silhouetted against the darkness, his body is long and lean, his movements reminding her of a stalking panther. He moves until he is so close that she can feel the heat coming off him. Cups a hand around her cheek.

"I saved you because you called to me, and because I chose to. I am here because I choose to be. What I do, otherwise, it is to protect you, Darcy."

His mouth comes down over hers, his lips surprisingly gentle. It brings tears to her eyes, that gentleness. It is not what she expects from Loki, and she finds herself kissing him back.

Loki's hands slide down Darcy's spine, tracing the curves and hollows of her body. His hands cup her behind, and he lifts her easily, pulling her towards him so that she is sitting in his lap. He places her so that there is an inch between them, then returns his hands to her waist, where they rest lightly.

He pulls back from the kiss, his eyes fixing on hers. "Would you lie with me, willingly and of your choice, if I ask?"

"Will _you_? With me, I mean. I'm sure you don't actually need permission from yourself." Darcy is aware that she's rambling, a blush heating her cheeks.

His eyes widen slightly. "No woman has ever asked me that before."

"If you need permission from yourself?" Darcy grins.

To her delight and surprise, Loki smiles back. "You are also the only woman I have known who combines laughter with love."

_Love_. It is, perhaps, the first time she has heard Loki utter that word. "What's the point in anything if you can't laugh about it? I mean, really? Sex is kind of one of the stupider things that humans - and Asgardians - do. It's downright ridiculous when you think about it."

Loki actually _laughs_. "You are unlike anyone else, Darcy Lewis."

"And proud of it. Besides, it's not like there are a thousand clones of you walking around. Unless you want there to be of course."

Darcy moves herself forward in Loki's lap, her lips pressed against his. Beneath her, he is hard, and she can't resist moving her hips just a little. His eyelids flutter slightly, and he catches his lip between his teeth. She grins, and does it again, and this time Loki's arms close around her, pulling her tight to him as his lips meet hers. He is less gentle this time, his tongue thrusting between her lips as he rocks his hips in a maddening and arousing rhythm.

It is Darcy who removes her nightgown, baring her breasts to him. Loki runs his hands down her arms, grasps her wrists behind her back, forcing her back to curve so she presents herself to him. He merely looks at her for a long time, his pupils dilating. Then he trails his fingers back up her arms, takes the weight of her breasts in his hands. Darcy bites back a moan as he passes his thumbs over her nipples. When he lowers his mouth to her breast, she has no hope of swallowing the noises she makes.

He licks a line from one breast to the other, his hands resting at her waist again. Darcy takes the opportunity to unbutton his shirt, slide it from his shoulders. His skin gleams like marble in the moonlight, and she runs her fingers down his chest. Smirks, then plunges her hand inside the waistband of his trousers. Discovers, not to much of a surprise, that he hasn't bothered with underwear. His moan is strangled as she drags her fingers over the length of him, and when she removes her hand, his hips jerk towards her.

Loki pulls back, and works at the buttons of his fly, sliding his trousers down and kicking them away. His shoes and socks have vanished somewhere already, Darcy notes, even as his fingers hook into her panties and pull them down, flinging them after his trousers.

Naked, they kneel on opposite sides of the bed. Loki has managed to move so the moonlight is at his back, and Darcy knows that she is utterly revealed to him in the pale light. She feels a surge of lust as his eyes roam over her.

"You know that I used to pray to the god Loki," she says. She splays a hand over her stomach, her thumb tracing small circles.

Loki's eyes go to her hand immediately. He nods.

She moves so that she is sitting at the head of the bed, her back supported by the wall. Loki moves also, kneeling before her, his cock jutting up against his stomach.

"When I was older, too old to pray, I read about women who revered Aphrodite as sacred whores," Darcy says. She begins to move her hand down, making those small circles still. Loki's eyes are fixed on her fingers, his lips parted. "And I wondered if any Norse women did the same. Or offered themselves up to the gods they worshipped. And I thought that, if any god was going to be worshipped in such a manner, it would have to be Loki. The others, they seemed to lack that kind of energy." She moves her hand between her thighs, strokes a finger along her folds. She is wet, and just from the look on Loki's face alone, she is close to coming. "I used to touch myself like this…and this…and this." She parts her thighs, runs her fingers along her folds again, thrusts them inside, then circles them on her clit, her hips jerking. She is _so _ close. "And I used to close my eyes, and pretend that when I opened them, Loki would be there, and he would take me."

She closes her eyes, slides down so her back is against the mattress. Fingers circling on her clit, hips moving up against her hand. When she feels like she's just about to spill over the edge, she removes her fingers, rests her hands palm up on either side of her head. Her thighs are still parted, her hips still moving in a syncopated rhythm.

She counts: one, two, three.

Opens her eyes.

Looks directly into Loki's eyes, his hands closing over hers a moment before he thrusts inside her, burying himself to the hilt in a single motion. That is enough to make her come, and she rides the waves of orgasm with her eyes open. Loki holds still after that single thrust, his body trembling, looking down at her with something like wonder in his eyes.

It is only when she wraps her legs around his waist that he begins to move again. There is a surprising tenderness in this, their bodies moving together while they look into each other's eyes. It doesn't take long before Darcy is falling over the edge again, Loki following close behind, his seed spilling inside her.

He moves so they are both on their sides, holding her close as he softens, still inside her.

"Does this mean that you're staying?" Darcy asks sleepily from where she is curled against his shoulder.

His arms tighten around her. "I'm not going anywhere."

#

In the morning, she wakes, and he's still there.


End file.
